SYDNEY - Australia's booming $12 billion education industry seems to have come under a shadow following a string of attacks on Indian students that has now galvanised the government to act.

At least a score of Indian students have either been attacked in public transport or waylaid near their houses in recent months in both Melbourne and Sydney.

The attacks on students reinforce certain stereotypes. Indians, the police and federal officials say, are hardworking, poor, peaceful and living in the outback that makes them vulnerable.

But do all these attributes of the thousands of Indian students or their failure, conscious or otherwise, to mainstream with Australian society, justify attacks against them?

"There's a name for this, 'curry bashing, let's go curry bashing'," Yadu Singh, a cardiologist in Sydney, told IANS. "They are not random at all; people are targeting them. They know these students are easy targets."

There are over 500,000 international students in Australia pursuing university education and vocational studies of which 94,000 are Indians - the second highest after the Chinese. Thousands of Indians are enrolled in vocational courses in government and private Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutes that act more as visa factories than institutions of learning.

In recent years Australia's education industry has boomed to become the country's third-largest foreign currency earner after coal and iron ore, generating about $12 billion in revenue in 2008. Indian students in Australia alone contribute $3.5 billion a year to the economy.

It is well known now that the sector has flourished. Everyone knows there is big money to be made and many of the dodgy institutes hire agents who end up exploiting the ignorance of youth, telling them about dream jobs and a Permanent Residency which can be obtained in two years.

"Indian students in Australia largely fall in two categories. One, those belonging to relatively better economic and educational backgrounds who are pursuing higher education in mainstream universities such as Monash, Victoria, Melbourne, La Trobe, and Deakin," says Tam Sridhar, a dean in Monash University.

"The others, those enrolled in private TAFE and other such institutes, have been most prone to attacks and are in the news for all the wrong reasons."

The wave of attacks has now galvanised the Australian government to act. The slew of measures announced include the setting up of a task force appointed by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, an audit on dubious institutes, improving policing on the transport corridor and seeking ways to find suitable accommodation and more campus-based accommodation for students as well as the need to examine visa rules.

And unless firm steps are initiated, many here within the intelligentsia believe that it could well threaten to undermine efforts to build relations between India and Australia.

As Robin Jeffrey, an emeritus professor of La Trobe University and a member of the Australia-India Council, put it: "When you mess with India, you mess with people who have the professional and financial capacity to pursue you relentlessly through law courts and international forums.

"India exports outstanding lawyers, financiers and IT professionals. Two of the world's top ten billionaires are Indians, according to the Forbes list. There are no Chinese in the top ten. Or Australians. You want to be friends of India, not antagonists."

In his reckoning the India-Australia relationship was on the cusp of something good, which was mutually beneficial.

(Murali Krishnan can be contacted at m.krish@ians.in) (IANS)