COMMENTARY
INTERVIEWS
SPECIALS
CHAT
ARCHIVES

Chinese goods swamp North-East India

Ask for a pack of Indian cigarettes in a shop in Imphal, Kohima or Dimapur and the shopkeeper looks askance.

Most likely you will get one of the many foreign brands, especially the popular Chinese gaspers like Win, Pine and Congress.

It's almost like being treated a foreigner in one's own country.

Although Indian cigarettes are just as good -- or bad -- the ordinary customer has come to prefer the exotic in everything.

Not just cigarettes, but all kinds of 'foreign-made' goods have captured the markets of the entire North-Eastern region over the years and Indian products have been relegated to the background.

In Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Tripura and even in Guwahati, Chinese-made items hold sway and Indian products are practically extinct.

Cigarettes, toys, electronic gadgets and household goods such as blankets, mosquito nets, kerosene lanterns, utensils, patent medicines, crockery and a host of Chinese goods are commonplace in the states bordering Myanmar.

Every major town of the region has its own thriving Hong Kong Bazaar and these goods are there for the taking.

If one were to visit a house in Kohima, tea would be served in bone China crockery from China, the serving tray would be Chinese, the bucket would be Chinese and even the serving spoons would be Chinese.

Most ubiquitous in the North-East is the ''Moreh blanket'' and the 'Moreh mosquito net'. Such is the demand for the ultra-soft blanket that many Border Security Force and Central Reserve Police Force personnel make a point to carry one back home to other parts of the country whenever they get leave.

Even the customs officials openly admit the transactions. ''There is no way to prevent it in such a hostile market situation. The Chinese produce quality items and flood them in the market. Their tax structure is also helping the traders,'' says an officer posted in Guwahati. The goods come very cheap and most people who operate in the smuggling trade are under the protection of some militant outfit, he adds.

According to him more than 90 per cent of smuggled goods is transacted through Moreh town on the Myanmar border, 109 km south of Imphal. Although no proper survey has been carried out, roughly 40,000 people in Manipur alone make a living out of it.

A large number of women around cross over from Moreh's morning bazar to Namphalong market in Myanmar at around eight o'clock in the morning and return with a basket of wares by two in the afternoon. Depending on the consignment, they earn between Rs 100 and Rs 300 a day acting as couriers.

The Dimapur Hong Kong bazar alone earns about Rs 2 million per day, while the Moreh market earns much more than Dimapur.

The Indo-Myanmar trade agreement signed in April 1995, legalised trade for a restricted 25 items which include pulses, mustard beans, fresh vegetables, fruit, garlic, onions, chillies, spices, minor forest products, areca (betel) nuts and leaves, food items for local consumption, tobacco, tomatoes, reed broom, sesame, resin, coriander seeds, soyabean, roasted sunflower seeds, catechu and ginger.

But due to poor communication and non-finalisation of exchange rates combined with failure to set up the requisite currency, immigration and banking infrastructure at Moreh, legalised trade has so far failed to flourish.

UNI