A Diwali for India

Diwali, the most awaited Hindu festival of India, the festival celebrated with lights, joy, family and sweets brings along prosperity and happiness. With Diwali around, people engage themselves in all sorts of activities, and shopping remains number one on the ‘favorite activities to do around Diwali’ list. While shopping where one buys gifts, clothes and eatables for their loved ones, the one thing that they forget is their country. While we blindly purchase lamps, tea lighters, LED light strings, crackers and plastics, we forget that all that money goes to some other country’s treasury.

On an average, sixth of all over India’s imports are Chinese. Where once economists assumed the bilateral trades to reach the US $30 million by 2016, the trade amount reached the whopping US $61 million in the last two years only. While we read these figures and try to estimate the zeroes in millions, there are Indians out there who are wasting precious energies and resources by plugging in extra lights in their electricity sockets and calling it their tradition. Whereas, traditionally Diwali was to be celebrated with clay lamps prepared by hand by artisans with their birth soil.

Sold for as cheap as 1 Rs per clay lamp, we still choose to spend hundreds on light strings affecting our environment and wasting our money just because it easily lights up the whole house in one go. This Diwali, let us come together and boycott all the international products and celebrate this Diwali traditionally by bringing our culture on step closer to us and promote Make in India.

A very happy and a prosperous Diwali to each one of you…

Statistics courtesy – Economic Times