ArthurPendragon

No, its because crimes against Indians was highly disproportionate to their share in population in Melbourne some time back. So a lawyer says something to protect his client ( which I suppose is not unique to India) and it gets extrapolated to an entire nation? And is Visa fraud unique only to a country? Which country leads in the number of visa over-stayers? The rules were tightened because there were some dodgy colleges which were taking advantage of the situation by offering easier courses towards occupation on SOL ( like cookery and hair dressing) and the financial component was made tighter so that only students who had funds to cover the costs were issued visas as some of the students had no funds to cover their education and had to work late at night in risky jobs which led to them being attacked. And this led to a short term drop in student numbers, but there were increase in student numbers that were enrolled in the universities for Graduate and Post Graduate studies. India and Australia have an extradition treaty, which I'm sure Indian government wouldn't have signed if it felt that its citizens won't get fair trial in Australia.

The animal rights movement ( which included liberating animals from Slaughter houses and experimental labs, some of which were not legal activities at that time) was the one that lead to the humane methods that's currently practiced in many countries of the world. So blaming them as hypocrites isn't right and if the status quoits had their way, all these progress would have stopped. Initially, the animal rights movement was demonized, but popular support pushed the governments to bring in rules and regulations to make the food/cosmetics/scientific labs and other industries more humane. Reading Peter Singer's Animal liberation would give us a new perspective of the movement. On the other hand, I feel that all animals need our empathy and fail to understand why some empathize with whales, but do not empathize with other sentient beings which are slaughtered for food and proven to be as intelligent. You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.-Ralph Waldo Emerson

And Indians don't mind that they are held to a higher standard than many countries in the world.

Females there get better or equal treatment than most of the other countries in the world which the press doesn't concentrate on.And definitely animals are treated better than most of the countries in the world.

There are some common values world over which every nation/culture in the world has to be held accountable for. We need to protest mistreatment anywhere in the world, be it west, east, north or south without discrimination. Culture changes and if the culture has some practices that are outside the norms at any time, they need to change with time, if they want to be considered as part of civilized world. Culture cannot be justification for these kind of things. Its discriminatory to hold one group of people to higher standards and then don't expect anything better from another group. [h=1]“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”- Mahatma Gandhi[/h]

Nice Heading by TheAge though http://www.theage.com.au/comment/british-tabloid-brings-trash-talk-down-under-20131203-2yofo.html

The perpetrators were in fact brought to justice. The coverage about this in the World press was due to ordinary Indians (Both men and women) protesting on a massive scale against this atrocity. And Indians should be proud of the fact that their Government listened to them and increased the penalties for violence against women, which is not unique to India (Read this->http://www.thenation.com/blog/172024/americas-rape-problem-we-refuse-admit-there-one#), though the penalties are now one of the toughest. I've spoken to many of Indians regarding this and all of them were very vocal about the perpetrators getting the capital punishment for this. Author and activist Eve Ensler, who organised One Billion Rising, a global campaign to end violence against women and girls, said that the gang rape and murder was a turning point in India and around the world. Ensler said that she had travelled to India at the time of the rape and murder and that after "having worked every day of my life for the last 15 years on sexual violence, I have never seen anything like that, where sexual violence broke through the consciousness and was on the front page, nine articles in every paper every day, in the center of every discourse, in the center of the college students' discussions, in the center of any restaurant you went in. And I think what's happened in India, India is really leading the way for the world. It's really broken through. They are actually fast-tracking laws. They are looking at sexual education. They are looking at the bases of patriarchy and masculinity and how all that leads to sexual violence." And about the 2 guys who tried to justify it, its victim blaming and there would be some in every country who would do that. We can't extrapolate the actions/words of two to a nation, and especially one that's as diverse as Europe.. If we do that, no country would be in the clear.

As the world's largest democracy, Indians have right to protest. Enforcement happens automatically as the people who benefit would not let the opportunity go. And coming to enforcement or lack of it, the same question can be asked about other developed countries too as the disadvantaged still are not at the same level as the rest. With India, it was different. The conquerors and migrants became part of the fabric of the nation. Tata, the current owners of Jaguar and Land Rover are Parsis (Zoroastrians) who fled persecution from Iran. Dalai Lama runs his Tibetan government in exile from India.

India too was able to recover from a longer history on invasion starting from Greeks, Mongols, Parthians,Scythians, Ummayads, Afghans and the Turks. But the invasions from 18th century were a bit different. The industrial revolution made resource transfer easier and faster, which wasn't possible during the earlier periods. India is in a difficult neighbourhood and even with that, its defence expenditure is still 2.5 percent of its GDP, which is the same as that of Britain. Indians would also be right in questioning the need for Britain to spend 2.5 percent on its defence when its in one of the most peaceful areas of the world. No one expects UK to have any conflict with France/Netherlands/Iceland/Belgium or Denmark. The caste system is illegal now and Indians were never slave traders. And India has one of the most extensive affirmative actions for the backward classes in the world You can refer to this article for more information. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/11/india.equality

To get a clearer picture, we need to look at Post British Empire migration from India to UK. USA has 3,183,063 people counting themselves of Indian (from India) ethnicity, which is definitely substantial. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/04/04/asian-groups-in-the-u-s/ The current Prime Minister of India is an alumni of Oxford and Cambridge university. The past Prime Ministers too were mostly educated in the UK. But the future leaders (Rahul Gandhi is a Harvard alumni) are mostly US educated.

Well, India has actually done a good job and now has the third largest GDP (PPP) in the world. India's resources were indeed taken by the colonials as the railways were built to ship them to Europe. There were no cotton fields in Europe. India's riches attracted the others from the time of Greeks,Arabs,Columbus, British,French and Portuguese. From a country having nearly 27% of share in world's economy, it was reduced to 3% during its independence. USA is now trying to get India into its orbit and the highly successful Indian migrant community in USA gives the Americans an advantage no other country can have. Even when Indians did nuclear tests during 1998, the world had to accept it on India's terms as isolating India was impossible. India has multiple suitors now with the Americans, Russians, French, Japanese, South Koreans, British and the Australian leaders making a beeline to visit and firm up alliances during the past year alone. And India reciprocated only to the Americans and Japanese with a visit of its Prime minister. Any growing country will have corruption until the institutions mature and with a fiercely independent press, India will surely improve.

Well, the stereotype from the crowd i mingle with is that the Indians are living in eastern suburbs like Hawthorn/Camberwell and are now the largest group in selective schools next to Chinese and are also in majority in the technical courses in Universities. Looking at how the Indian community has performed in USA, I feel that the clout will only increase.