SIX-YEAR PLAN IN ASIA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 762, 26 February 1954, Page 7

SIX-YEAR PLAN IN ASIA

MIHE Colombo Plan is not, as some people seem to think, a plan. for helping people who should be helping themselves. On the contrary, the main idea is that the countries of South and SouthEast Asia should make an all-out effort towards their own development, while advanced countries-like New Zealand ~-do everything they can to help. The plan will be three years old-half its allotted lifetime-this year. Asia Has a Plan-three hour-long programmes to be heard from NZBS stations-gives a picture of work going on under the plan as D. G. Bridson, BBC Assistant Head of Features, saw it in the course of a three-months’ jour-

ney which took him 25,000 miles, The programme is itself an essay in Commonwealth co-op-eration, because it is the first project of a scheme for feature coverage of the Commonwealth, promoted by the BBC in cooperation with other Commonwealth broadcasting organisations, and agreed upon at the 1952 Commonwealth Broadcasting Conference in London. And though the programme was written in London, an _ Australian, Loftus Hyde, of the ABC, had a hand in it and travelled with Mr. Bridson through Ceylon, Malaya, India and Pakistan. Mr. Bridson _ started his journey by Comet from London, and travelled by air, road, rail and water, from the steamy heat of Ceylon to ‘the freezing wind of the Khyber Pass, from the bandit country. of Malaya to the empty deserts of Sind and the

A each was doing all that it could to better the economic plight, of its people. To help that ‘general effort-supplying technical aid in training and experts, gifts of equipment and gifts of cashwas the overal] purpose of the Colombo Plan. . Canadian fishery experts, Australian farming and livestock experts, New Zealand doctors and ‘nurses, British engineers and costing accountants -these were only a few of the people I met assisting with the work. But invaluable as their help was proving, they | -were- only a .small hand.

ful among the vast army of able technicians that they were aiding.- For first and foremost, the countries of the Colombo Plan were fearning to help themselves." New Zealand has agreed to provide £3,000,000 in capital assistance over the first three years of the plan, and by early in the third year £2,378,000, had already been transferred or earmarked for specific purposes. Of thi? £1,000,000 has .been granted or set aside to help meet the cost of constructing the All-India Medical Institute, which will make a= special feature of social and preventive medicine. Help for Pakistan has gone towards the purchase ‘of earth-moving equipment for’ irrigation projects, and equipment for estab; lishing a cement factory. New Zealand’s grants to Ceylon have been used for extending laboratories and other buildings and providing equipment for a dryfarming research station. About twothirds of Ceylon is a "dry" zone-mainly a waste of scrub jungle-and «the task of the research: stationwill.be to explore

all possible ways of making, this zone productive. The Indonesian Government is also to have help from New Zealand in establishing a trade-training centre. New Zealand has agreed to contribute up to £400,000 for technical aid under the Plan, and we have, of course, been host to many people from Asia who have come here for courses of training, and we have sent experts to help in India, Pakistan, North Borneo and Malaya. The first programme in Asia Has a Plan, which will start from 2YC at 7.30 p.m. on Saturday, March 6, examines the aims of the Plan and takes listeners on a visit to some of the projects in Ceylon and Malaya. The second programme, about India, looks in on a great. multi-purpose irrigation scheme and says something about the plan to revive cottage industries and village community projects. The last of the programmes concerns Pakistan’s Six Year Plan,’and includes recorded interviews about the \Thal Development Project, with: its vast programme involving the irrigation of more than 2,000,000 acres.

Thal. "Always," wrote _- Lise Mr. Bridson, introducing the programme in the Radio Times, "the object was the same: to find out what was going on, what was being done and what the country had to show for itself. Actually, a great deal was going on. for every country I visited-Ceylon, Malaya, Pakistan and India-each had its own development programme, and