KANGAROO LEAP

In the lush green of Punjab’s Doaba region, when a child scores a dud in college, he doesn’t strap himself to his father’s tractor and till the land his forefathers left him. Instead, he sits on a plane to Australia, enrolls himself for a vocational course in an institute there, lands a job and waits for that coveted permanent resident status.
For several years now, Australia has been a preferred destination for Indian students. But now, youngsters in Doaba and Majha regions of Punjab, which have traditionally sent scores of illegal immigrants to UK and Canada, are hitching a ride to Australia — this time legally, as students.
A report published by the Australian High Commission on June 30 says that in the first half of this year, 25,000 Indian students went to Australia to study in universities and institutes there. About 50 per cent of them are from Punjab, particularly from the Doaba districts of Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Hoshiarpur and Nawan Shear and the Majha districts of Amritsar and Gurdaspur. The Australian embassy in India said that over 17,000 students from Punjab had flown to Australia in the last eight months while the number was just 5,000 last year.
Karan Gulati left home for Sydney last year but didn’t have to miss his naan and butter chicken. It only helps that he is doing a course in ‘commercial cookery’ at the Austech Institute for Further Education. Gulati says 95 per cent of the students in his institute are Punjabis. So while he tries his hand at commercial cookery, his friends study automobile engineering, hair dressing, hospitality, electrical technology and hotel management — vocational courses that are popular among Punjabi students. The course fee ranges from 5,000 Australian dollars to 7,000 per semester.
Apart from 39 universities, Australia has 500 institutes, such as the one Gulati is in, that provide small-time courses to students. But how established are these institutes? Aris Ortanez, director of the Australian Institute of Commerce and Language who is in India on a student recruitment programme, said his government has laid out strict norms for colleges and institutes. He said people in India were welcome to come to Australia and see the universities for themselves.
Thanks for the invite, but these Punjabi students weren’t waiting for it — they were already on a flight to Australia. Back home in Doaba, this rush has meant good business for a string of consultants who help students reach Australia, like the Kangaroo Studies Private Limited, which these days is busy organising seminars by representatives of Murdoch University, Melbourne Institute of Technology, Swinburne University and many more such Australian universities.
While students aren’t complaining, Punjab Technical University Vice Chancellor Dr S.K. Salwan says students should be careful about the colleges they choose. “It will be worth their while if students bothered to find out if the colleges they opt for are reputed enough.” Most students, he said, apply for these courses simply to land in Australia and settle there.
Few people know that better than Kamal Kumar Bhumbla, who owns B.N. Overseas Educational Services, a students’ consultancy firm like Kangaroo Studies. He is just back from a trip to Australia and can’t stop gushing about how Indians are “model students”. “Australian universities prefer Indian students as most of them speak English, unlike those from China, Japan and other Asian countries. Indians are also considered honest and hard-working.”
Bhumbla said that it was easier to get a student visa in Australia because the government there had relaxed sponsorship rules. But he warned students against resorting to shortcuts. “Fake documents and exaggerated IELTS scores can land students in trouble.”

(With inputs from Dharmendra Rataul and Shaheen P. Parshad)