New Delhi: Well known educationist and innovator Sonam Wangchuk's video message on Sunday where he called upon Indian citizens to boycott Chinese products is starting to make an impact as people from various fields including celebrities have come forward and lent support to it.
In a video message released the Magsaysay award winner emphasised that while the soldiers would use their bullets against the Chinese at the borders the Indian citizens must use their wallets to counter the Chinese. "If 130 crore Indian citizens and 3 crore non resident Indians come together to boycott 'made in China' goods, the rest of the world too is likely to join us as the entire world is angry with China today."
Wangchuk said that boycotting Chinese products could be a boon for Indian products as boycotting Chinese products could give the space to Indian products to flourish, creating employment in the process and help in achieving the Prime Minister's stated goal of self reliance.
Wangchuk had spelled out a road map for banishing Chinese products from our lives "uninstall Chinese apps within a week, discard Chinese hardware in a year, as a year's time would be required by our industry to come up. When lakhs and crores of apps are deleted the message would be loud and clear for China, it would be forced to come to the negotiating table."
Well known actors such as Arshad Warsi, Ranvir Shorey, Milind Soman and Kamya Punjabi have endorsed the call made by Wangchuk, the man who had inspired the script of the popular film '3 Idiots'.
Arshad Warsi took to Twitter to express his resolve to be free of Chinese products "I am consciously going to stop using everything that is Chinese. As they are part of most of the things we use, it will take time but I know, one day I'll be Chinese free. You should try it too... ".
Supermodel turned actor Milind Soman also shared Wangchuk's video on his Twitter handle and announced that he is deleting the popular Chinese app Tik Tok. "Am no longer in Tik Tok, boycott Chinese products" he tweeted.
Video jockey turned actor Ranvir Shorey also supported the movement on his Twitter handle writing "Bilkul.Beshaq".
Well known television actress Kamya Punjabi appealed to people on her Twitter handle to 'be Indian, buy Indian (hashtag)Boycott Chinese products"
The day saw people sharing the link of the 'China app remover' through WhatsApp. Though boycott of foreign products by citizens has always proved to be a very effective tool for warding off economic imperialism, government policy too has a role to play here.
Deepak Sharma is the Akhil Bharatiya Prachar Pramukh of Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, he says that besides people boycotting Chinese products, the government too can take several steps to check Chinese products from flooding our markets "It is a false notion that government is under WTO obligations to allow foreign goods into the market unchecked, under various clauses the government can put a cap on Chinese products, for example the reciprocal clauses- if they are preventing entry of Indian products into certain segments, we can also stop entry of Chinese products into those segments here in India.
Secondly the anti dumping clause is very strong clause, if they are dumping their products into our market then our government can take action against it. After our boycott 'made in China' goods rally in 2017 the government imposed anti dumping duties on about 100 Chinese goods within the framework of the WTO norms. Similarly the government itself is a big buyer, a certain percentage of government procurement can be fixed for Indian companies. Similarly the e-commerce platforms, the government has ordered that these should act merely as platforms while only Indian sellers can sell their products through these platforms."
Sharma highlights the extreme imbalance of trade that exits between India and China and how influx of Chinese products is hurting Indian manufacturing.
"More than 50? of our trade deficit with the entire world is with China alone, since China became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 Chinese products have progressively flooded our market, it is no coincidence that our MSME's started to decline after 2001. Their belligerence at the border again highlights the need to end reliance on Chinese products."(UNI)
