Recently I went to Samayapuram temple - a famous goddess temple in a small town near Trichy, Tamilnadu. I could see a lot of shops selling variety of cheap plastic toys. I even bought a few for my friend's kids. Few days after that when I was walking down Jaya Nagar shopping area in Bangalore, I found the same toys sold in some platform shops. I was surprised. It didn't strike me then that they could be the cheap chinese toys flooding our market reaching nooks and corners of the country.
I recently read in magazines and newspapers that the economic downturn has resulted in a decrease in demand for chinese goods in western markets. Since then China has been looking for a place to dump the surplus goods it has in hand. And India
was chosen as a convenient choice and started exporting all those goods here. The government is not indifferent to this and have indeed banned such exports and doing their part to prevent India being China's dump yard. The ban will help to save our domestic industries from becoming extinct, as they cannot compete with these chinese goods price-wise. Also most of the western countries have banned chinese toys because they don't pass the safety standards. Especially, a recent finding reveals that the lead content in most of these toys are too high and pose a great health hazard to kids. So from safety perspective as well a complete ban on such imports is justified.
But how cooperative, are the small merchants and the public, to such ban is the question. Its true that most of the small merchants make a living by selling those goods. Their livelihood would be severely affected. They might have to look for another business to earn a livelihood. Probably the government and NGOs can extend help for them to reestablish.
Ideally people should stop buying such goods. But not always people seem to take the right choice. With import restrictions being in place, it was reported that the demand for certain toys are only increasing and the remaining stocks are selling at very high prices. More awareness has to be created among these people.
For any change to come in , its not enough if just the government and officials are working on it. Every citizen should act in a
responsible way. Only then the country can go in the right direction.
