INDIA AS A MARKET

Taranaki Daily News, 10 December 1928, Page 12

INDIA AS A MARKET

I EUR N.Z. DAIRY PRODUCE. I BOMBAY MAN’S ADVOCACY. That. New Zealand should try to establish a market in India for her dairy produce is advocated by Air. K. Lalkaka, a business man of Bombay, who; after a fortnight in New Zealand, is returning to the East. “At present/’ he declares, “New Zealand is playing at marketing on the threshold of the world’s markets. A gold-mine awaits .her in India in her dairy produce. This market is at present monopolised by foreigners. It would be a wonderful thing for New Zealand, and for India, too. if this country could wrest it for herself from other hands.” “The remoteness of New Zealand gives her a great advantage in viewing world affairs with a detachment that may help her to look at things in a truer perspective, but, on the other hand, this very remoteness of hers has made her very little known in the other hemisphere. Your Government Tourist Bureau should therefore enlarge its scope of activities and carry on a vigorous propaganda campaign in India and elsewhere. The scenery we have seen here is some of the best we have found. In many cases we have found nothing to equal it, and the native Maori adds to the country a charm that is all his own, It speaks a great deal both for him and for the white settler that the Maori should have so readily embraced a civilisation so totally different from the life of his forbears. That he is the happier for it is evident. Yet if the Maoris are to be saved as a race, in them must be fostered the pride of race.”

SPIRIT OF NATIONHOOD. • ’ll is difficult,” Air. Lalkaka said, in conclusion, *‘to compare New Zealand with any other part of the world. New Zealand" is New Zealand, and allimportant is the fact that the spirit of nationhood is here. No curse is more difficult to lift than the lack of this spirit. Without it the biggest metropolis is reduced to a shack of organised industry; with it, the meanest collection of packing-cases ever hammered together on a prairie can uplift and dominate a continent. One other trait in the mental make-up of the people is their tremendous seriousness. This, though good in itself, is often fraught with danger, inasmuch as it sometimes endg to circumscribe one’s vision and make one parochial in outlook.”