The Indian Automobile Industry manufactures over 11 million vehicles. This level of production has given the companies a very big war chest to go shopping for brands. What is hidden from view is the fact that these companies invest very heavily in new product development.

Arumugam Aramvalarthanathan will be giving his talk on the subject Entrepreneurship and start-up ecosystems. He will be exploring what has made some regions in the world hotbeds of high-value venture creation and the role of government intervention in catalysing this. Drawing lessons from these experiences, take a closer look at the current landscape of entrepreneurship in India and Australia and assess their potential to be effective start-up ecosystems.

The Report of the Perceptions Taskforce published in 2012 by the Australia India Institute considered both the opportunities and continuing barriers to better bi-lateral relations between Australia and India, following a period of significant misunderstanding. With renewed interest and a very energetic focus by both government and non-government players, Maxine McKew looks at the success of recent initiatives - the people-to-people contacts, the change in policy on energy security, and the additional ways in which soft power can be deployed. What’s ahead for Australia-India relations?

National newspaper The Australian's Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan presented a Tiffin Talk on Australia Among the Great Powers – India, China, the United States.

India’s 377 million urban population, though already huge in number, is set to grow at an accelerated pace. Projections are that by 2030, India will add another 200 million people to its urban population

According to Robyn Jeffrey, the mobile phone changed humanity's way of life more than any invention since shoes, and the power of the mobile phone is "not in the mobility, it is the autonomy," he says. In 2001, India had 4 million cell phone subscribers, or 35 mobiles for every thousand people. Ten years later, that number had exploded to more than 750 million and 658 mobiles per thousand people. Over just a decade, the mobile phone was transformed from a rare and unwieldy instrument to a palm-sized, affordable staple, taken for granted by poor fishermen in Kerala and affluent entrepreneurs in Mumbai alike.

Water scarcity is among the main problems that the world faces today. India is no exception, as it grapples with the problem of water shortage in many of its regions, which have led to many conflicts. Inefficiency in water use and irresponsibility in the management of water resources pose a serious threat to our water security and sustainability.

By 2020, India will add 100 million people to its workforce and is projected to have 25% of the global workforce with an average age of 29. To avoid the expected demographic dividend turning into demographic nightmare, the new workforce must be adequately skilled and they need to find employment opportunities as they enter the labour force. Out of the current employed workforce in India, only 12% are skilled. India is in immediate need of domain VET partners in modern construction and manufacturing skills and to inculcate benchmark service industry practices. So far it’s the education & skill sector from the UK and Germany which has taken the lead to engage with the Indian Vocational Education sector.

Rabindranath Tagore’s Gora (1909) has been viewed variously as “the most competent description of nationalistic Neo-Hinduism” (Nirad C Chaudhuri) and as the first of his three overtly political and anti-nationalism novels (Ashish Nandy). This paper will revisit the novel and analyse it instead as a site of the struggle between domesticity and worldliness, between rootedness and domicile that characterises much of Tagore’s vision. I argue that this opposition is the central problematic of Tagore’s fictional oeuvre, one that he himself self-consciously titled as that of “the home and the world” in his later 1916 novel, Ghare Baire.

Tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death and disease globally, contributing to 6 million deaths every year. With strong tobacco controllegislation enacted in developed countries, leading to reduced smoking rates, tobacco companies are targeting developing countries like India, to market their products. India is the second largest producer and consumer of tobacco with 275 million tobacco users including both smokers and smokeless tobacco (SLT) users. This Tiffin Talk will highlight the disproportionate burden that tobacco use poses for vulnerable poor in India.

This Tiffin Talk is based on Dr McDuie-Ra’s recent book, Northeast Migrants in Delhi: Race, refuge and retail. The material comes from an ethnographic study of migrants from India’s north-east border region living and working in Delhi, the nation’s capital. Northeast India joins India to China, the Himalayas, and Southeast Asia. Home to a diverse population tracing their roots to Tai, Mon-Khmer, and Tibeto-Burman peoples, the region is commonly known for secessionist and insurgent movements.

Ashok Malik is an Indian current affairs columnist, writing for the Times of India, Hindustan Times, the Asian Age, the Pioneer and Tehelka. He has also contributed to international publications such as Forbes and YaleGlobal Online.

Dr Peter Friedlander; Bye Bye to Hindi-chini Bhai Bhai? Hindi press coverage of Chinese news. This talk looks at coverage of Chinese and Asian news stories in Hindi newspapers and contrasts it with coverage in the English language press in India. The question posed was, in coverage of international news in India does the Indian English language press focus on stories which reflect policy issues and the Hindi press focus on stories that centre on personal issues?

Hydroclimatic Teleconnection in the context of climate forcing on hydrologic variables: An Indian Perspective by Dr Rajib Maity

Hydroclimatology is a promising field of research in hydrology and water resources engineering that uses the information of large-scale climate circulation as well as local meteorological information. This helps to identify and capture the variability and uncertainty associated with the hydrologic variables owing to hydroclimatic teleconnection, along with the local meteorological influences.

This Tiffin Talk will argue that the environmental problems confronting Indian cities have arisen because millions of people have been forced to live in illegal settlements that lack adequate sanitation and other basic urban services. This is the result of two factors. The first is the legacy of the colonial city characterised by inequitable access to sanitation services, a failure to manage urban growth and the proliferation of slums and the inadequate funding of urban governments.

In this Tiffin Talk Sandy Webb will present a collage of adventures and discoveries following many of New Delhi's trees into their natural habitats in the forests of Central and Northern India. What particularly intrigued Sandy were the myriad of ways people have used trees and their products and the reasons people planted trees from different places. However equally interesting, which trees do different places have in common through ancient proximity?

In this Tiffin Talk, Ms Sheela Patel, will explore challenges of urbanization faced in India for the next 20 years and explore issues with regard to informality and slum development in Indian cities with relevance across all cities of the global south. The talk will focus on the work of the NGO, Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC). This organisation is working in collaboration with the National Slum Dwellers Federation.

In this Tiffin Talk Ms Lalthanchami Sailo will relate her experiences as a visiting Endeavour Executive Award fellow at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). Ms Sailo’s Australian experience will simultaneously be interwoven with her life at Mizoram University, located in the North East corner of India. Mizrom University is aiming to carve out a reputation both in the national and international arenas.

Accountability, governance and participation are concepts that are commonly encountered in development theory and practice. This Tiffin Talk will examine attempts to promote social audit and accountability in rural India through the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) which was implemented in 2006. A key feature of MGNREGA is that it recognizes employment as a legal right and is now widely acknowledged as one of the most extensive rights based social protection schemes in the world.

The high mental health burden and large treatment gap of mental disorders in India means that there is an urgent need for developing appropriate mental health models that can be replicated and scaled up to increase access to appropriate care for people with mental illness. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and its public health institutes are collaborating to develop local solutions to build and strengthen the national community mental health system. Through AusAID’s Public Sector Linkages Program, India and Australia will work together on a program to help shape policy and practical directions for community mental health in India.

India is a study in diversity and contrasts. The country is an emerging economic power that rivals China, has created staggering wealth for some of its citizens, contributes significantly to the global intellectual resource pool in a wide spectrum of areas and contains the largest young population of any country in the world today. It is the world’s largest democracy and has consistently upheld its citizens rights to govern themselves. And yet, India is also home to poverty and disease and ranks poorly in most global development indicators.

The internet and communication technologies, ICTs, as they are known today, have been identified as an efficient tool for creating a more equitable society. It wasn’t always so. Widespread adoption of the internet only really began to gain momentum in the 1990s, while the developing world, including India, took longer to start this journey. Today most countries are strategizing how best to provide universal access to its citizens, both through broadband and mobile telephony. It has been widely accepted that ICTs can help development, however, there is still considerable debate about the manner in which this should take place.

As one of the world’s two fastest growing large economies, India’s footprint in the global economy is expected to significantly expand over the coming decade. While China’s economic expansion will also continue, it may be at a less frenetic pace than it has since 1990. A convergence in economic growth rates, with the possibility that India grows faster than China after 2020 means that the difference in relative economic size will be less pronounced.

The early Mughal emperors from Babur onwards were keen devotees of Persian literature and collectors of the prestigious books copied, illustrated and widely disseminated beyond the borders of Iran. Persian poets and painters were increasingly drawn to India, where there were rich rewards and attractive working conditions. This was especially so during the reign of emperor Akbar (1556-1605) when the Mughal library and painting studio was significantly expanded.

Food security is intrinsically linked to the goals of human security and political stability. The manner in which states choose to tackle food insecurity at home – e.g. through export/import mechanisms, social safety nets, the domestic use of scarce natural resources such as land and water, or by purchasing foreign agricultural land to grow food for domestic consumption etc. – may also have direct implications for strategic and human security concerns outside their borders.

India is a key player in what is now widely referred to as the “Asian Century” and the ongoing fascination with India by artists, writers, performers and arts managers is now amplified by its extraordinary development. Increased attention is being paid to India by governments and business and this interest is also providing opportunities for cultural engagement. However, it is important that our cultural engagement is not solely ‘export’ and ‘marketing’ focused but responds to demands from the region for real exchange through collaboration, reciprocity and partnerships. In January 2011, Asialink Arts lead an R&D delegation “ New Horizons” to explore new opportunities for cultural engagement with India.

Ms Pfeiffer puts forward the challenges offered by her collaborative arts residency with A. Selvaraja over a ten week period in Ballarat. Anchored by a method grounded in phenomenology, she details how the embodied working process resolved communicative problems. Creating a new work together brought forward common themes arising from identity in the changing world.

India is a land of historical amnesia. Everyone appears to have forgotten the 12 March 1993 Bombay bombings, which have been described as India's 9/11 some nine years before 9/11 happened. Thirteen synchronised bombs killed 257, injured 713, and damaged buildings valued at US$6 million. This talk compares the features of these bombings with subsequent terrorist attacks, including the most recent attacks of 13 July 2011.

India approved genetically modified (GM) insect-resistant cotton in 2002. The benefits to the industry have been spectacular with production doubling and India now a net exporter of cotton. GM food crops offering similar farmer and consumer advantages have been developed but none are yet released in India despite strong political and scientific support for public/private partnerships in this area. The University of Melbourne has been a leading partner in the public/private partnership, CIMBAA, developing insect-resistant cabbages and cauliflowers for India since 2002.

The many questions concerning the future of the urban Indian landscape have at their core the conflict of a modernist design aesthetic, which privileges uniformity and predictability, with what many consider to be the unsightly presence of a chaotic local aesthetic. The hand-painted signboard, a hallmark of Indian urban experience, is largely disdained by modernist planners, who became especially vocal in the lead-up to the Commonwealth Games in 2010, when the goal of transforming Delhi into a ‘world class city’ envisioned, among other measures, a reining in of the city’s frenetic signboard culture.

India, through its sheer size is an energy powerhouse on the global scale, but the per capita energy consumption is only a fifth of the global average, with the average Australian using 20 times more electrical energy compared to the average Indian. However there is a broad spread between urban and rural areas with around 400 million Indians mostly in rural areas with no access to the electrical grid. Access to electricity can help greatly with health and education and generally improving quality of life and increasing access to the grid is a key goal for the government. In a business as usual scenario much of the extra power generation will come from coal fired power stations.

Sino-Indian relations have been growing steadily over the past two decades. The two-way trade has grown especially fast; China is now India’s biggest trading partner – something inconceivable just a decade ago. However, despite the high level of engagement economically and politically, there remains a great deal of mutual suspicion. In this talk, we’ll look at some of the reasons for the mistrust. We will also explore the complex nature of Sino-Indian engagement from the Indian perspective, including the variety of views among influential Indians on relations with China.