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Indians welcome ‘more joyous’ Diwali, snub Chinese goods at bazaars amid border dispute
- Traders say fewer people are buying Chinese-made items amid tensions between Beijing and New Delhi over the disputed border
- The trend comes amid Modi’s call for economic self-reliance, which has spawned products such as cow dung-based lamps as an alternative to chemical-based Chinese lights
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Neeta Lalin New Delhi
Indian trader Rakesh Sharma is thrilled that business has been booming for small vendors like him ahead of Diwali on Thursday.
The business owner at Delhi’s Bhagirath Palace, the biggest market for electrical goods in Asia, said he had seen a footfall increase of 60 per cent from last year, and people are also “splurging more in anticipation of a more joyous Diwali”.
“With Covid-19 infections down and fewer restrictions on mobility, we’re hoping to touch pre-pandemic level profits,” Sharma, 43, said.
After a dire year with two massive outbreaks that killed hundreds of thousands of people, the rate of daily infections has fallen to around 10,000. At the height of the pandemic, India was reporting some 400,000 new cases a day.
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More than 1 billion Indians have received at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose, although authorities are now focusing on second shots to meet a target of inoculating all adults by the end of the year.
Sharma’s neighbour Jignesh Parikh, a vendor from the western state of Gujarat, said due to tensions between New Delhi and Beijing over the countries’ disputed border, Indian shoppers have increasingly been avoiding China-made goods.
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Last year, buyers were proactively asking for Chinese products “as they were cheaper as well as trendy”, but that had now stopped, Parikh said.
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