New Zealanders “In A Paradise”

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31941, 19 March 1969, Page 1

New Zealanders “In A Paradise”

The people of New Zealand lived in a paradise beyond the most imaginative dreams of the common people of India, the general secretary of the World Federation of Trade Unions (Mr Mahendra Sen) said in Christchurch yesterday.

Mr Sen believes that the organisation of labour under

the control of a national government is the only course open to solving the country’s “shocking” social and economic conditions. He said there was no such thing as a minimum national basic wage, the unemployed got absolutely nothing and those with jobs lived in constant fear of losing them to any one of 10 persons waiting outside the door for work. The Government’s efforts to curb the country’s population growth had failed. For religious and deep-rooted family reasons, the people as a whole were not interested in birth control.

Until widespread corruption, extortion, exploitation, and cheapness of life in India were abolished, Indians could not even hope to attain a standard of living comparable with that of New Zealanders, he said. To make such a hope a reality a strong socialist government would have to get full control of the country. Mr Sen arrived in Christchurch from Sydney on Monday and will spend about 10 days studying trade unions in New Zealand.

India as a whole agreed that socialism was the answer to its problems, but the Government in fact pandered to capitalism. It legislated against rice merchants hoarding rice to create artificial shortages and high prices, but it did nothing to get control of supplies and distribution.

He said he had already found sharp differences between trade unions in India and those in New Zealand. Whereas the movement in

New Zealand was organised Seventy-five monopolies conand centrally controlled, the trolled three-quarters of the trade unions of India were economy of the country, Mr badly fragmented and plag- Sen said. Similarly, all but ued with internal strife. 25 per cent of the agricultural

land was owned by persons who leased it to farmers.

The amount of food available was not so limited that masses of Indians should go

hungry. Persons with an eye for quick profits who controlled basic food supplies such as rice were not concerned about the importance of human life. There were so many Indians that the loss of a few through starvation would make no difference one way or the other, they thought To change this, the country would have to undergo a type of peaceful revolution whereby the control of capital and industry would be taken away from the few and placed in the hands of the Government. Attitudes which had lasted for centuries would have to be changed. People in their intensely religious way were prepared to accept their lot as the will of God, not realising that the means of change lay in their own hands. Mr Sen said that one of India’s greatest problems was unemployment. Of a total work force of 220 m about 50m were perpetually out of work. This huge force of unemployed merely undermined the security of those with jobs.

The trade union movement represented only 16m

workers and was so badly fragmented that a common approach to any problem was impossible. Indeed, some of the trade unions enjoyed the patronage of the Government and the employers if they kept quiet, avoided militant action for the improvement of conditions, and supported the economic and political policies of the Government. The average wage for an Indian worker was about $12.60 a month. This was hopelessly inadequate and was the crux of another major evil—money-lending. Although the Government had adopted a policy of letting the tiller of the soil own the land it had not prevented ownership falling to rich peasants who had bought it from the former feudal lords. Today the farmers were still the victims of high land rents, and although co-operative movements had been formed to buy land collectively they had failed. Collective ownership and co-operative farming on a profit-sharing basis appeared to be the only answer to the agricultural problems of India, he said.