Fiji's Major Industry and Indian Political Crackpots

AGAINST a back-ground of war and threat of war, the year ended in Fiji with the Colonial Sugar Refining Company still trying to reach some sort of finality with Indian sugar-cane growers for a 10-years buying contract which was designed to come into force as on June 1, 1950.

Six months have been wasted in beating around such piffling questions-as whether the cane farmers should be allowed to plant the variety of cane they fancy; and whether or not they may be present when their cane is weighed. (Clause 9 of the contract says clearly that they may, but some Indian leaders have persuaded the Illiterate farmers that it is not so.) What goes on behind Fiji’s sugar-cane curtain?

When the five growers’ Unions failed to reach agreement with the Company over the contract, the Company began to negotiate with growers direct. By the

beginning of December half the growers had signed; and this must have suddenly appeared to the Indian politicians as too much of a good thing. What were they getting out of it? Nothing. Let them then whip up some feeling. Call some meetings—and down with the grasping capitalists!

In the last weeks of the year there was a spate of meetings, where Fiji was again treated to the spectacle of Indian nolitician fighting Indian politician, while the common cane-grower, whom we are told is really a very nice, solid citizen at heart, presumably sat silent and goggle eyed and let the storm of hot air blow him this way and that.

Vishnu Deo emerges as being opposed to anything A. D. Patel supports; and Patel’s party is opposed to Vishnu Deo’s pro posals. N. S. Chalmers (European boss of the Kisan Sangh) and Ajodhya Prasad are, as usual, trying to make

trouble for the Company and gain notoriety for themselves. Patel advises his followers to sign the contract; Vishnu Deo urges his outfit not to sign. K. B.

Singh, trying to make a political come back, enters the arena and holds a public meeting at Nausori to try to beat the pants off Vishnu Deo.

APPARENTLY, the Company’s drive for signatures was going well when Chalmers and Ajodhya Prasad started their campaign urging farmers to revoke. Armed with revocation forms and some means of persuasion they collected a number of signatures. Then some of the farmers went to the Company, and said they had been intimidated and that they wanted to revoke the revocations.

At latest advice, Mr, Chalmers has gone to New Zealand. He said that he was on his way to the Philippines and West Indies to see how cane was grown there, and (to paraphrase a wartime ditty about the GI, an apple-tree and his girl friend) he told the farmers before he left; “Don’t sit under the sugar cane, with anyone .else but me, till I come marching home.”

In other words, they were to refrain from negotiating with the Company until he returned from his travels.

Last time Mr. Chalmers went abroad, a visit to India and England was scheduled.

For a good part of the time he was away he played bowls at the Empire Games in Auckland. He did visit the UK and, pre sumably, India, but evidently just for the ride. What lasting benefits accrued to the Indian cane farmers from this trip have never been apparent.

However, it is to be hoped that Mr.

Chalmers does manage this time to carry out his threat. In the West Indies he may learn that the Fiji cane-grower’s lot is not such an unhappy one and that West Indies would be pleased to take over Fiji’s 170,000-ton yearly export quota which was fixed at the Empire Sugar Conference last year. It will be remem bered that West Indies, at that time, ex pressed disappointment at the quota permitted them.

Indian cane growers got a record price for their cane last year; the price this year will be even better. With the long term MOF contract and the parallel CSR contract, the sugar industry on which the economy of Fiji is based, seems set for a period of stability and prosperity—if meanwhile it were not kept in a state of turmoil by the personal squabbles of a few men who use it as a pawn in their own political games.

In a less namby-pamby age, the vapouring of these agitators would not be tolerated. But what goes on in the Fiji sugar industry today is symptomatic of industry the world over. This sudden rush of so-called freedom to the head of the common man has left the door wide open to the opportunist and the political crack-pot, who is permitted to whistle the tune to which we all must dance in one way or another.