Recently, I was listening to a fight (not physical) between my daughter and one of her friends in the neighborhood. As a result, their birthday party guest list got reduced by one kid, regular gift exchanges will be stopped as well as playing together will be soon be a thing of the past. After a while, my little one backed-off and took a break from her friend and realized how important the friendship is (loss-gain), especially during the Corona times. Following the break they changed the tactic and were ready to reconcile, which they did by apologizing and playing together again. In such harmless exchanges, I do not interfere and encourage my little one to deal on her own and conclude. For me it was interesting to see, how five year olds bring ideas to the table and change the tactics. After such exchanges, a postmortem does follow to understand the thought process and to give feedback as well as to learn.
The above incident has similarities to the videos and messages that I have been receiving to boycott “Made in China” products/services for reasons such as Corona and for creating tensions at its borders. Thinking on the same lines as the kids did, I could not see a gain through this boycott calls. A few lines from my thought process:
- In the current landscape where cars, planes, smartphones consists of components from various countries, it is highly impossible to boycott any major industrial country and its goods. The list of items should not stop with just some LED lamps, fireworks & apps, but should include most of the cars including Daimler Benz (10% shares owned by Geely), Apple products (made in China or electronic components are from China), Nike, etc.
- Advocating and inciting the public (in some cases for personal mileage) to boycott a country or race, is not the solution. We should look into the root cause. Is it the trade agreements or is it the common people like you and me, who look for cost effective deals, letting companies/governments make compromises. Potential solutions would be to renegotiate the deals or build/create local solutions/products to meet customer expectations. These will not happen overnight!
- In my opinion, calls to boycott products from a particular country is same as calls to reduce/avoid foreign workers in Western world (Indian IT engineers in USA). It is both discriminatory and not sustainable in the long run.
- Moreover such an action/call can backfire, given that China is a big market for several non-Chinese companies; Porsche, Infosys, Tata.
- China is not only primary source for various raw materials but also very cost-effective sourcing destination for various components, which is used by various companies across the world, including Indian companies. Finding alternative source locally and having to reduce the product margins, will not be smart, especially when the economy is struggling to reboot due to the pandemic.
Such a boycott call will lead to a loss-loss scenario in our modern world, again leaving the people to suffer. Let us take a leaf out of little ones and make a smart judgement, while looking for solutions, preferably collaborative ones. It is OUR call!