INDIA NOTES

Southland Times, Issue 21430, 26 June 1931, Page 4

INDIA NOTES

A WAY OF ESCAPE TRADE EXCHANGE WITH INDIA. (By D. W. M. Burn, M.A., President, New Zealand and India League.) It is quite possible, as some think, that we have touched the bottom, and begun ever so slightly, ever so slowly to move upwards towards prosperity again, but even the most sanguine must surely wish to see the movement quickened, wish to see some way of escape from the unparalleled depression of the moment. Under the social and commercial system of the day, though no sane person but would cheerfully admit its imperfections, salvation lies in markets. ■New Zealand has looked far and near lor these, to the Mother Country. Europe, Canada, United States, South Africa, Australia; she has even dealt with the Far East, but she has never seemed to recognize the possibilities of trade with what we used to call “our great dependency” with India, soon to be a sister nation, an independent and self-governing member of the group that form the British Commonwealth. It is scarcely worth our while to try to trace the cause of this neglect. To-day the possibilities of trade with India, of closer intimacy with India in many ways, have struck us, and are being made the subject of inquiry. On the wide field of art, and cognate cultural matters, we shall speak again; the object of this article is to draw attention to the possibilities of trade exchange. India Wants Wool. Our knowledge of that great sub-continent is so vague, so hazy, that though we have all heard of the Himalayas and their perpetual snows, most of us think of India as a land of heat; we hear of the hot weather, of the departure of such as can afford to go from the sweltering low levels to the hills; but India has her cooler months, and even frosts in certain districts; her people, unlike the prince in the fairy tale, well know what shivering means, and in the cold months all who can afford to purchase woollen clothes or wraps make use of them. Our delegate to the AllAsian Women’s Conference, who spent about five months in contact with the life of India, mostly about Madras, but also in the north, reports the need of wool for blankets, shawls, fine cloth; for carpets also, though that would mean a coarser staple. She notes the fact that. India, with her dense population, has reduced pastoral areas to a minimum; she tells of cattle feeding in the city, streets on vegetable refuse from the stalk, of city sheep kept by ones and twos; of goats, whose herder, walking ahead, of course, and not behind his flock and unaccompanied by dogs, strikes with his staff the branches of an odd tree here and there 'as he walks along, knocking down leaves for his hungry beasts to. eat. She tells of the harshness of certain blankets which she saw being woven near Amritsar; she telk of the exquisitely soft and comfortable Bengal shawls, some four or five feet square, which run from thirty shillings to five pounds in value; and of the many poor who cannot purchase these, but would leap at the chance of purchasing, some sort of woollen garment were it w’ithin their limited reach. Even now wool, raw wool, of various degrees of fineness, is required, and till India begins to build her own mills for the extended manufacture of cheap woollens for her millions, we might well find a market for cardigans .and pullovers or some equivalent, if the possibilities of the situation were thoroughly explored. India Wants Butter. Indians cook with butter. Australian butter can be had in India, but not the New Zealand product, though a friend who paid a visit recently to England told me that he had eaten New Zealand butter at Colombo. Australia, offering an inferior grade of butter and haying the advantage of direct shipping facilities, has perhaps been able to udereell us, but when one notes that China took our butter in 192829 to the value of £31,598 Japan in the same period took it to the value of £17,217, Dutch India took it to the value of £B,BoB_, Straits Settlement to the value of £18,035 and the Philippines to the value of £19,293; and when one remembers that in none of these cases was direct transport available,' one feels that it is more than likely that there has been no real effort on the part of our own traders to explore the possibilities of the Indian market. With Canada showing us the cold shoulder in the matter of our butter, we might do very much worse than look into the Indian situation. India took gold and silver both from us in 1928-29 to the value of £280,858 and £40,717 respectively. India took tallow from us to the value of £27,322. India, who took no wool from us in 1927-28, in 1928-29 took wool to the value of £32,205. The total value of our exports to that country in that period reached the sum of £386,421. It is a beginning; but. when one thinks of India’s teeming millions, of her crying need of development, of the crying need of a raised standard of living for her agriculturists and labourers in general, and sees these and much more coming with the final shaking off of foreign dominance, one may be pardoned if he reads the sum in millions instead of thousands as it stands to-day.

India might take our honey in bottTes, be it noted; our delegate saw Australian honey but found none from this Dominion. India might take our cheese, India might take our mutton —the Hindu eats no beef; possibly the frozen article, almost certainly the tinned. India, which takes our Glaxo, that product being obtainable in all parts, might take our Highlander milk as well as Nestle’s article, might possibly prefer it. In every Indian journal one _ may read advertisements of Ovaltine, Swiss Milk, Sanatogen, etc., but with the exception of the übiquitous Glaxo, no advertisement of Dominion goods. What can our sister nation offer us in exchange? Tea, cotton goods, • silk goods, nuts, spices, brassware, embroidered silk and cotton gpods, object of art of one kind or another. Again as regards India’s side of the question it is a matter for thorough exploration. For the Leagues part, it would like to see a trade commissioner appointed with power to interview not only Government officials and trade magnates, English and Indian, in Madras, Calcutta and Bombay, but also some Congress officers, and last but by no means least -rulers of the greater States. » India is much too vast a field for singlehanded working, and our commissioner would have to be provided with expert subordinates to attend to west and south. His w’ork would be exacting, but, we believe, extraordinarily fruitful. He would find numbers of associations with which to work, bodies whose operations cover wide areas of country, such as, to go no further, the Madras Provincial Co-operative Union, the All-India Spinners’ Association. Further•more, India is already interested in New Zealand. For one thing the simple fact that we have here no colour question interests Indians to an extraordinary degree. They love to hear of our Maoris and how brown and white New Zealanders live side' by side, entirely equal members, of one nation; of how white and brown sit on the same benches in our schools, play in the same cricket and football teams, go to the university together, enter into trades, professions, and politics without distinction of races, and inter-marry without causing a cyclone of gossip and caste protest. That little matter of which we never even think is a broad basis for the building up of Indian sympathies. They have heard of our Plunket nursing system, of our care for our very young, and when they think of their own needs in this particular field it is not surprising that they hope that the Dominion may some day extend its sympathetic interest to their problem, and give them the benefit of 1 its experience. To bring this note to a conclusion, India will soon be mistress in her own house. Being so, she will forthwith enter upon a .scheme of selLdevelopment, based on education. She will .look all about her for opportunities of trade exchange, social exchange, and cultural exchange. Are we to wait, we who ourselves need markets, till

all the world is wooing the new Dominion ? Or shall we, recognizing what must come, make our advances now’, showing ourselves ready to enter into a relation which will prove of benefit to both India and ourselves—show readiness in no half-hearted fashion but by a strenuous effort to grasp the possibilities before both countries and set exchange between them on a safe, solid, permanent foundation?