Boycotting Chinese goods; Remember the bat and ball story?

I am sure we all remember our childhood days and the times we spent playing bat and ball. Someone would own a bat, someone a ball, someone else a few wickets, one of us would own a pair of gloves, etc. We would all be enjoying the game till the lad owning the bat gets clean bowled. He would fret and fume and say it was unfair and when the rest of us would stick to the umpire’s decision, he would walk away with his bat. The game would end on a sad note. It’s so similar with what India is trying to do with China. I don’t want to play with you because….

The Indian government’s discreet call to boycott Chinese goods is a far more serious call than the young boy walking away with his bat. The US too is not far behind in this almost juvenile act. Trump has gone ahead and banned visas of different kinds, thereby restricting a whole lot of aspiring young Indian IT software engineers from getting into the US and working for mega Silicon Valley based companies. Just because India refused some American airlines from flying into India during this pandemic season, Trump got mighty angry. And it was not very long ago that Trump had said that Modi is his very dear friend.

India’s grouse with China started with the killing of Indian soldiers by Chinese troops in some place around our territorial borders. Reports suggest that we too killed several Chinese soldiers. Instead of talking it out and discussing it at the highest levels, India has gone ballistic and is asking every Indian to boycott Chinese products. How serious is this? Extremely serious, I feel.  

For the sake of argument, let me take you all more than a 100 years back, to the beginning of the 20^th century and introduce you all to the real “Make in India” campaign that was initiated, not by Mr Modi and his team, but by the Indian National Congress.  The campaign then was called the Swadeshi Movement and it was officially proclaimed on August 7, 1905 at the Calcutta Town Hall, in Bengal. The movement entailed using goods produced in India and burning British-made goods. A lot of British-made goods were burned in India. The Swadeshi Movement began after the British government decided the partition of Bengal.

Around the same time, the father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi wanted khadi to be popularised and with the help of the “charka” (a hand operated spinning machine) he wanted Indians to spin their own cloth, boycott British goods completely and also wear khadi.

More than 100 years have passed since the “Swadeshi” movement started and to find someone wearing a khadi dress in India today is like looking for an Eskimo in Rajasthan!  Now it’s the turn to boycott Chinese goods. What is the extent of trade between China and India? According to a report, China’s exports to India stood at 515.63 billion yuan (about USD 74.72 billion) in 2019, an increase of 2.1 % and China’s import from India was 123.89 billion yuan (about USD 17.95 billion), a decrease of 0.2%.

Going by these figures, it is obvious that the trade between the two countries is huge. So where do we start our boycott and with what? Trade is one thing that brings countries together and helps each to grow. Today you may be dependent on a foreign good, but tomorrow you may be smart enough to make that in India. That’s what trade does; it helps us to get smart and innovative. But that again depends on a country. If a country wants to be eternally dependent on another, so be it. But India has come a long way since Independence. 

A boycott will only disrupt things for the Indian industry. Rather than a boycott, India must slowly veer away from depending too much on China and develop its own capabilities in making whatever China does. In short, we need to beat them in their own game over a period of time. 

And among the industries that have really become global entities to be reckoned with is the Indian automobile industry that comprises not only of vehicle manufacturers but also of ancillary manufacturers making everything from nuts and bolts to heavily engineered engine parts, crankshafts, pistons, valves, et al.

MG Motor India is basically UK based Morris Garages that is owned by SAIC Motor Company, the largest auto company in China. Do we boycott the MG Hector SUV and the MG ZS electric vehicle? Does it make sense? Both the vehicles are brilliant four wheelers that are made in India at the Halol plant in Gujarat by Indian workers. And those who have bought the cars in India vouch for their brilliant performance. Then pray, why have we put on hold the investment by Great Wall Motor (another Chinese auto company) for a staggered US 1 billion investment in the Talegoan facility in Maharashtra that would eventually give jobs to more than 3000 Indian people?

These are only the tip of the Chinese investment iceberg. Critical auto components come from China, critical raw materials for the auto industry come from China, a lot of decent technology for the auto industry comes from China, electric battery raw material comes from China, the list goes on and on. So why destablise your auto industry over this boycott call?

Now coming back to the question of where to start your Chinese boycott, that could be very confusing. The other day I bought a pedestal fan from Amazon e-commerce site. I opted for “Usha” which I am sure all of you will agree is a popular Indian brand. The moment the packet came in I was surprised to find the label saying “Made in China”. I am surely not going to boycott that. I bought it with my hard earned money. A lot of things in my house are “Made in China” and have been bought paying Indian taxes. I have not smuggled it in through some sleazy route through China.

Speaking of Chinese goods, there is far too much of China in our lives today. That does not make us Chinese or our loyalty all in favour of China. Our clothes, our zips, our bra hooks, our under clothes, our mobile phones, our electronic goods, our cars, our motorcycles, our scooters, our trucks, our white goods, our shoes, our building material, our tools... almost all of them have an element of China in it.  

Boycott is not a positive word, Rather “Make in India” are positive words. Let’s keep making as much as possible in India, but at the end of the day, we need to travel, we need to trade, we need to use each other’s resources and technologies, all of which are very normal and critical.

Can you imagine that hydroxychloroquine that India makes to fight malaria and now to some extent the coronavirus, is made with the help of China because the key active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) required to make hydroxychloroquine  are imported from China?

Whatever said and done, Indian brands and Chinese brands have to co-exist in this world. You cannot have Patanjali all over. Just a day or so back, the Ministry of Ayush and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) asked Patanjali group to stop the promotions and prove their claim first before announcing that their 'Coronil' is a cure for COVID. It’s a different matter that the yoga master insists that his company’s product is a cure against COVID-19! The rest of the world’s scientists and researchers are not such dimwits either that they are unable to come out with a cure first.

Besides, a patanjali car, a patanjali scooter, or a patanjali motorcycle, all sound so weird. Similarly, don’t ask Indians to boycott Chinese goods. And that goes for Trump too when it comes to banning certain visas. All this reminds me of the bat and ball story of yore.