28th October 2016

- The Hindu

Stiff opposition to Chinese crackers

This Diwali, a unique movement is gaining momentum across the city. The call is to strictly boycott firecrackers imported from China. And it does not stop there.

Even those items that have some connection with our North-Eastern neighbours is looked at with suspicion. The present situation is turning out to be challenging for crackers dealers, who have to go out of their way to convince their customers that they are indeed selling ‘made in India’ items.

“We are getting affected with this sudden opposition to Chinese crackers,” said Sanjay Kumar of Shanti Fireworks. “None of the wholesale or genuine traders in the city sell Chinese firecrackers, but people are very much against even buying crackers with photos that resemble Chinese nationals. Few crackers like garlands are known as Chinese crackers, though they are made in the country. People have stopped buying these variants of crackers thinking it comes from China. Previously, the cracker boxes had China written on it, and now none of the stores are selling such items too.”

It does not look very easy to wipe “Chinese” off the crackers culture. According to Mr. Kumar, the licenses that are issued for setting up stalls and shops has ‘Chinese crackers’ mentioned on it, which has been the practise since the 1940s.

The story is more or less the same, even in the web world. Online stores too are doing their best to convey that they are also not selling Chinese products. For instance,www.hitechcrackers.comhas ensured that users see a pop-up even before they move on to buy crackers from their site. The pop-up has a message that they only sell crackers made in the country and not Chinese.

The founders, Vangala Vishwajeet and Vishnuvardhan, say that a lot of users have been enquiring about the make of the product, which is the reason why they decided to tell one and all that they respect and support the people’s sentiment.

However, with a huge profit margin of more than 80 per cent, some of the traders say that there are still a few in the city who will sell Chinese crackers, probably a day or two before the festival to avoid being caught.