Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week pledged a multi-million dollar line of credit for Fiji's struggling sugar industry, once worked by thousands of indentured labourers from India under appalling conditions.
Sugar was the mainstay of the island economy under British colonial rule before falling into disarray during decades of political upheaval and racial tension between the descendants of early cane field workers and indigenous Fijians.
India will provide a $70 million line of credit to build a co-generation power plant at a sugar mill, Modi said in an address before the Fiji parliament. He was invited to speak by President Voreqe Bainimarama, who twice seized power in coups before being voted in after a general election in September.
"Let us create an ocean of opportunity marked with a new horizon and a new era," Modi said in an address to parliament. Modi is only the second Indian prime minister to visit Fiji, despite Indians making up 40 per cent of the population, after Indira Gandhi in 1981. "For Modi, this is really another example of reaching out to the Diaspora, while Bainimarama wants to demonstrate Fiji's role in directing South Pacific policies," said Jenny Hayward-Jones, Melanesia programme director for Sydney-based think tank Lowy Institute.
