The Hindu : Exploring ways to make Chennai sister city of Melbourne

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jan 10, 2004

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Exploring ways to make Chennai sister city of Melbourne

By R.K. Radhakrishnan

Vasan Srinivasan

CHENNAI, JAN. 9. The Indian community in Australia will grow because of their many positive qualities, says Vasan Srinivasan, a professional who migrated to Australia in the late eighties. The additional incentive was that there was no discrimination in the country, he adds.

Indians formed the fourth largest community in Victoria after Greeks, Italians and Chinese. "I have never felt that I am a second rate citizen in that country. Never. It's purely about how we communicate and reciprocate," he says, stressing that this was because Australians were very tolerant.

Mr. Srinivasan, who contested as a Liberal Party of Australia candidate in the 2002 elections in Forest Hill, Victoria, and lost by a modest margin, says that Indians fuelled part of the recent Australian growth in computers and software. "We would love to welcome more professionals from India, especially in the areas that Indians are very well-respected," he says.

He was in Chennai to visit his family and to work out modalities for the new business that he had set up.

During his stay here, he also wants to explore the possibilities of making Chennai a sister city of Melbourne. "So far Melbourne does not have a sister city in India. We would like to see Chennai as a sister city of Melbourne. We are working on it and we will see if we can achieve it in the next year or two," he says.

Mr. Srinivasan left India in 1980 after being trained in injection mould tool design. He worked in Singapore for seven years and the company he worked for wanted him to relocate to Australia as a technical expert.

Talking about his entry into politics, he said that he was a keen political observer. "I always had an interest in politics. If we need to change something there is no use of being outside. You have to take a more active role to change the views and systems in a way that the whole community can benefit," he says. His first chance came along when he was working for a company in Melbourne. His company's Managing Director and a local Federal Minister were classmates. He ended up frequently interacting with the Minister then. Later, he did some background check on the major parties, the Liberals and the Australian Labour Party. "I realised that the reason I was in Australia as a migrant was because of the Liberal Party. They removed the white Australian policy." Joining the Liberals was, hence, a natural choice.

One question that he was often asked during his election campaign was if he knew Sachin Tendulkar. "I would say that he is the most popular Indian after Indira Gandhi. He is quite well known."

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