New Delhi: The Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) on Friday said it will soon launch a nationwide campaign to encourage people to use indigenous products and boycott foreign goods.
The decision has been taken to revive the 'Swadeshi, Suraksha aur Swavalamban Abhiyan' and make it a "mass movement" again in the country following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent clarion call, SJM national co-convener Ashwani Mahajan said.
"Addressing a public meeting recently in Gandhinagar (Gujarat), the prime minister said, 'we will have to make traders take a pledge in every village that they will not sell foreign goods no matter how much profit they make'," Mahajan said.
The SJM welcomes the prime minister's clarion call for Swadeshi and appeals to all the institutions, organisations and individuals in the country to support the prime minister's call, he said.
"The SJM will soon recall the 'Swadeshi, Suraksha aur Swavalamban Abhiyan', the aim of which is to encourage all countrymen including businessmen, industrialists and technocrats with special emphasis on youth and women, to boycott foreign goods and adopt indigenous products for self-reliance and protect the country from foreign invasion," Mahajan said.
The SJM was already planning to take a "big initiative" in this regard and make it a mass movement to encourage people to use indigenous products instead of foreign goods, he added.
Mahajan said it is true that despite the "patriotic people" boycotting Chinese and other foreign goods, imports from China have increased over the last few years.
"This is because Chinese goods are also sold in India in a disguised manner, sometimes by removing the Chinese label in the markets and putting the Made in India label, sometimes by e-commerce companies and foreign brands in violation of the rules of origin and sometimes by importing from China as intermediate goods," he said.
Amid the prevailing situation, the prime minister's call for Swadeshi is a "meaningful and practical step", Mahajan said, expressing confidence that "patriotic traders" will play a crucial role in stopping the "flood of foreign goods" in India.
"For some critical materials being imported from China at the moment for being a part of a global supply chain, the Make in India scheme, especially with the involvement of MSMEs (micro, small, medium enterprises), will put an end to those imports in the near future," he added.
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