India kicks out China on Dhanteras
By S Jha
New Delhi, October 22: The Diwali gifting shopping has been marked by a clear customer aversion for the Chinese goods, with even the shopkeepers, super marts and malls taking extra care to not put on display ‘Made in China’. From crockery to decorative goods, the buyers looked at the ‘Made in India’ labels before making the purchases.
Azad market in the Old Delhi bore clear signs of the shopkeepers deserting the Chinese goods. Even the decorative lights bore signs of local manufacturing. Traders said that even if the decorative lights were of the Chinese origins care has been taken to replace the labels with ‘Made in India’ to escape the customers’ ire against the Chinese goods.
Most of the gifting items, which were being sold in the national capital, were from the Indian brands, who competitively priced them to appeal to the middle class budget. Customers were heard asking the sales representatives if the goods were from China. Anti-China sentiments, which had been building since the Galwan clash in eastern Ladakh where the Chinese Army has been camping since April 2020, has been clearly visible among the Indian customers during the pre-Diwali shopping.
A survey in some of the key shopping markets in the Delhi national capital region suggested that the idols of Luxmi and Ganesha and other items which previously used to have been imported from China were bearing the address of the manufacturers in Rajasthan, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh. Also, the glass-based crockery items were from the major Indian brands, which significantly lowered their prices to match the cheap Chinese goods.
It may be note that there is no direct commercial flights between Indian and China since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Indian traders have been hiring chartered flights to visit the Chinese cities to procure goods. In 2021, China had $70 billion of trade surplus with India, as the two-way trade touched the level of $125 billion.
But the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh and its various affiliates have been leading campaigns against the Chinese goods in the last few years in their bids to teach Beijing a harsh lesson for picking up border skirmishes with India in eastern Ladakh. The Indian investigative agencies have launched a sever crackdown against the Chinese phone makers Vivo and Xiomi, while sending the instant loan Apps operated by the China-based companies on hot pursuit, with several of the Chinese nationals now in jails.
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