You raise a good point about the "caste" system. Funny, I had never thought of it as racist, but more "cultural", but i guess you are right. I worked in Orissa 20 years ago, in a training capacity. Tried to delegate tasks according to ability.......and found the hard way that you cant place a person of a lower caste in charge of one of a higher caste. They would reverse roles soon as your back was turned. Eventually, we learned. And yes, you wouldnt want to be casteless or "untouchable". But they certainly didnt regard it as racism, just a fact of life that you were born into through no fault of one's own. That will never change. I agree the Govt rushed too fast to import workers during the "boom", who were really only needed because Aussies avoided the more menial jobs and flocked to the highly paid mining boom. I also concede that the importation of labour was sometimes misused to lower wages in certain industries. But I dont think the main beneficiaries thereof were Indians, so why the particular and apparent backlash against them?
