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Ahead of election ‘Jacinda-Rail’ reaches out to the Kiwi-Indian community

Ahead of election ‘Jacinda-Rail’ reaches out to the Kiwi-Indian community

This week ‘Jacinda-rail,’ as she may be called, given her penchant for rail as the most preferred mode of transporting people around in some of the major urban centres of North Island, made its first official stop at a Kiwi-Indian community station – The Indian Weekender office.

By sheer coincidence, Ms Ardern arrived at The Indian Weekender office directly from Tauranga, after announcing $20 million commitment to invest in a passenger rail service linking Auckland, Hamilton and Tauranga.

This prompted our team to ask her if she was coming by rail to which came the prompt reply “No, that’s the point that we need rail.” 

Lest it may cause offence to anyone in the community, The Indian Weekender considers itself a modest, and one of many other equally meaningful representatives, of community’s overall interests.

As a responsible bearer of this overarching responsibility, The Indian Weekender is seeking to put a maximum premium on the votes of the members of the Kiwi-Indian community in this election.

The goal it seeks to achieve is to make political parties across the spectrum work hard for the votes of the members of the community.

Since we live in the times of Jacinda Ardern’s “relentless positivity,” or Prime Minister Bill English’s “relentless dissatisfaction” (about what can be achieved by New Zealand in the near future), therefore it’s prudent to put The Indian Weekender’s commitment toward community’s interest as, well, relentless.

An essential premise, in the pursuit of this above described relentless endeavour, is to project votes of the community as decisive – and not merely important in this election.

If it is a matter of choice between considering the Indian community’s votes as decisive or important, then The Indian Weekender will unabashedly choose it to be decisive rather than just important.

In The Indian Weekender’s view, the Kiwi-Indian community’s votes are, or should be, aggressively sought by all political parties, and not considered merely a given.

Anyway, often choices could be arbitrary depending upon the amount of self-belief and self-conviction that one allows themselves. 

Like elsewhere in New Zealand, the Kiwi-Indian community is also curious about the Jacinda-mania and about the possibilities on how it could affect them.

For the Kiwi-Indian community, the effect of the possibility of Jacinda’s elevation as the country’s future prime minister transcends beyond local issues such as immigration, law and order, health and education affecting them, to the emotional issue of bilateral relationship with India – a country that many in the community consider their original home.

Therefore The Indian Weekender team had sought to explore Ms Ardern’s understanding and intentions about managing NZ-India bilateral relations.

Currently, competing goals in Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the two countries and supporting India’s efforts in gaining entry into the elite Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG), are shaping the bilateral relationship landscape.

Ms Ardern has conveyed a willingness and open mindedness in taking forward this important relationship for New Zealand.

However, the bulk of the talk was around issues affecting the Kiwi-Indian community in New Zealand such as law and order and immigration which are duly covered in detail on our multiple platforms.

Ms Ardern, like everywhere else, did manage to bring the charisma of her personality to deflect or evade difficult policy questions.

But it is still too early in the lead up to the election with a full four weeks remaining before voting concludes. And as they say, a week is a long time in politics.

 

This week ‘Jacinda-rail,’ as she may be called, given her penchant for rail as the most preferred mode of transporting people around in some of the major urban centres of North Island, made its first official stop at a Kiwi-Indian community station – The Indian Weekender office.

By sheer...

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