INDIA’S IMAGE

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32099, 22 September 1969, Page 2

INDIA’S IMAGE

4 Not Country Of Beggars’ Most New Zealanders have a wrong Image of India a* a country of beggar* and starving people, ilagued by riot*, according to two Indian girt* now in Christchurch.

“This io not quite true,” Miss Laiita Dusgitota said yesterday. “India is a land of mote than 500 m people and the proportion of poor people is relatively smell.” India's standard of living could not be compared to that of affluent Western societies, but it was gradually managing to feed its own people and to improve its national economy, Miss Usha Jetly said. The problems of such a heavily populated country, however, were vast and would take time to solve. India was a country on the move, becoming industrially confident, ready tor economic co-operation with the rest of the world and needing trade more then anything else. At the recent International Trade Fair in Auckland, New Zealanders had been amased to see the amount of heavy industrial machinery that had been manufactured in India, Mis* Jetly said. Many were also surprised to learn that some of It was being exported to New Zealand. Miss Dasgupta and Mire Jetly now work in Sydney as hostesses for the Tee Board of India.

They are in New Zealand to promote tea as the “in drink” <rf IMO for the sophisticated. They will be at Clarkson’* Supermarket, Linwood Avenue, and Hay’s-Wright Stephenson's stores in Christchurch thia week to give demonstrations, including the making of TfwMm tea.

Both visitors take their tea with milk and sugar, as is the general custom in India.