Letter to BS: Specifying the country of origin in products is not rational

The directives to ecommerce firms such as Amazon, Flipkart, and Paytm to figure out a mechanism to identify the country of origin for all the products sold on their platforms by DPIIT (Department for Promotional of Industry and Internal Trade) in the backdrop of increasing clamour for boycott of Chinese goods following the violent clash between Indian and Chinese Soldiers on LAC is retrograde. It is nothing but signals a Union government readiness to embrace protectionism in the guise of providing more thrust to its ambitious self-reliance programme. The very idea of specifying the country of origin in products in today’s integrated world will hardly serve any rationale economic purpose other than undoing the benefits and reverse the gains made from the decades of free trade. 

M Jeyaram  Tamil Nadu

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