Whenever China tries to create issues with India our leaders and few of our social media brothers would start a boycott Chinese products movement.
After seeing people blindly following it up. I thought I should write about it on my blog explaining how it doesn’t work that way.
India has come a long way after opening the market for international trade.
If you remember, before 1990, it takes a month or more to receive a landline connection. Only government telecom companies used to supply the handset. We could only see Bajaj scooters and Ambassador cars on the road, there was no much choice for consumer products.
Global brands were a luxury during those ages because only the rich will have the money to import. And people who have relatives in foreign countries will have a few imported products. There were only a few households who could afford smuggled goods.
Later, in the year 1990 then finance minister Dr. Manmohan Singh opened India for international markets by reducing import duty.
And in the year 1991, he again introduced FDI( foreign direct investment ). Where global brands came in India to invest and make their product affordable to the Indian population.
This policy changes on globalization opened the markets to the world. It also bought few perks to the general population of India
After all these years of enjoying the prosperity and growth of globalization, we cannot change the practice of interdependency overnight.
The consumer products which are affordable to common people will become a luxury. The mobile you reading this blog will no longer be the same price. After the introduction of Chinese smartphone brands, the smartphone became affordable for our general population.
India became the largest smartphone market and popular brands like VIVO, XIAOMI sold its smartphone in few seconds on Amazon.
Many people in rural India could only afford smartphones because of these Chinese brands offering at affordable rates.
Even Indian brands like Micromax had a huge dependency on China for their production.
China has the infrastructure to make a product cheap. China has all earthly metals that are used to make electronics.
Our Pharma industry imports more than 80% of its raw material from China. So if you boycott the Chinese supply chain this industry will be affected the most and the cost of the medicine will increase. Is India ready for such Inflation?
More than 90 % of the electronic goods , electronic spares are sourced from china.
China has become a major contributor to the supply chain Ecosystem. We cannot wipe out that over one night. Many MSME ( Medium and small scale Industries ) in India depend on china for their raw material and machinery supply where India lacks to give at that cost.
Most of the Indian start-up has few investments from Chinese investors. If they withdraw the investment it will create an imbalance in the startup ecosystem.
If we foresee China hasn’t much to lose with boycott Chinese products movement. But India on the other hand has to pay a huge price in the form of price inflation.
India and China are the members of WTO ( World trade organization ) an arbitrary boycott will affect few sanctions which India is enjoying now. This boycott Chinese products propaganda by few leaders sends a wrong signal to the world.
Make in India is a road to fill this gap, but it takes years to be self sustain and create a global ecosystem that we enjoy now.
However, India should take a path of self-sustaining by encouraging MSME with incentives and tax soaps. That will encourage the local manufacturing sector to compete with other foreign imports.
Also developing new sources for raw materials to reduce the dependency on China.
India can build a self-sustained model but with the help of fellow countries. No country has developed on its own, there is always interdependence.
It is a common factor which people should understand rather than voice an opinion blindly.
Kindly share this article with your friends or relatives who blindly believe the media and say boycott Chinese products.
