why are we let­ting a long-time fun­der of the israeli geno­cide machine man­u­fac­ture goods in the mal­dives?

we could dis­cuss the role of sup­pli­ers and retail­ers in the mal­dives — i’ve even draft­ed a pol­i­cy-activism pro­pos­al in that regard for a nation­wide ban on bds list goods (to pre­vent mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions from pen­e­trat­ing the mar­ket via new dis­trib­u­tors again) and sub­sidi­s­a­tion of alter­na­tives demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly deter­mined by an open pub­lic sur­vey as well as a reset of dis­trib­u­tors via lot­tery only includ­ing new small, upcom­ing businesses/individuals for dis­trib­u­tor­ship of the new brands rather than the exist­ing mar­ket lead­ers.

how­ev­er, pro­duc­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent issue.

Con­text: our food, con­fec­tioner­ies, and bev­er­ages mar­ket

guess who the own­ers of the par­ent com­pa­ny — malé aer­at­ed water com­pa­ny (mawc) — are? go on, have a look. it’s the maniku fam­i­ly, i.e., the own­ers of uni­ver­sal enter­pris­es, i.e., one of the rich­est, most pow­er­ful tourism tycoons in the mal­dives.

all the largest dis­trib­u­tors and sup­pli­ers of these brands in the mal­dives are not small-and-medi­um enter­prise (sme) clas­si­fied (of course, that makes sense) — lily enter­pris­es, red­wave, hhs trad­ing, and euro-store — though there is a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of sme-clas­si­fied busi­ness­es that also have indi­vid­ual dis­trib­u­tor rights for spe­cif­ic prod­ucts (this makes up a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the retail-whole­sale mar­ket).

decades in the mak­ing, the gen­er­al mar­ket for the f&b indus­try has become a web of a few large mul­ti-dis­trib­u­tors for mul­ti­ple or even all prod­ucts of the same brands (like the brands I’ve men­tioned just now) and many sme clas­si­fied small­er scale dis­trib­u­tors for indi­vid­ual or a hand­ful of prod­uct units from these brands (some­times, even cor­ner stores).

there is a strate­gic pur­pose to this struc­tured lib­er­al-mar­ket: a sys­tem of depen­dence built over decades of mar­ket sat­u­ra­tion and nor­mal­i­sa­tion, to the point that alter­na­tives are both finan­cial­ly unfea­si­ble and cul­tur­al­ly unthink­able.

via larg­er com­pa­nies, multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions like nestlé and coca cola estab­lished brand depen­dence (or, euphemisti­cal­ly, ‘brand loy­al­ty’) for mar­ket demand. with the ‘invis­i­ble hand’ of lais­sez-faire cap­i­tal­ism, they then strate­gi­cal­ly del­e­gat­ed small­er indi­vid­ual prod­ucts to sme-clas­si­fied emerg­ing busi­ness­es. with enough of these prod­ucts sat­u­rat­ing the mar­ket in so many ways — with con­sumer depen­den­cy — they’ve made all small­er retail­ers, hawk­ers, and cor­ner-stores com­plete­ly reliant on their prod­uct lines, espe­cial­ly with economies of scale, mak­ing alter­na­tives more expen­sive.

the result is pre­dictable: any indi­vid­ual deci­sions to swap to alter­na­tives becomes a death sen­tence for busi­ness­es that aren’t large mul­ti-dis­trib­u­tors, and small­er stores with­out any dis­trib­u­tor rights to any prod­ucts at all have no choice but to obey the mar­ket — and the con­sumers are over­whelmed with such a range of prod­ucts nor­malised in their lives that a com­plete boy­cott on the con­sumer lev­el starts to feel impos­si­ble.

fur­ther­more, even if one or more com­pa­nies try to boy­cott these, the clus­tered lib­er­al mar­ket is set up so that these brands can sim­ply shuf­fle dis­trib­u­tor rights to some oth­er enti­ty and keep on going. it weaponis­es income inequal­i­ty on the con­sumer’s side to cre­ate this ecosys­tem of depen­den­cy.

my par­ents’ com­pa­ny — count­line — is also an sme that is tan­gled in this mar­ket (dis­trib­ut­ing a few prod­ucts like some mil­ka vari­ants from these brands too). this is also why this cause is a per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty and mis­sion for me. i don’t want to min­imise the role this plays, even if i’m resign­ing from the com­pa­ny soon to pur­sue an aca­d­e­m­ic career (this is a priv­i­lege too, and i just don’t like busi­ness), even if we are small­er than the actu­al mul­ti-dis­trib­u­tors.

i per­son­al­ly don’t think there can be any ‘anti-cap­i­tal­ist’ busi­ness­es under this polit­i­cal econ­o­my, but that’s a whole oth­er dis­cus­sion.

i’ve nev­er tried to hide my priv­i­leges; i come from a place of high­er rel­a­tive priv­i­lege com­pared to many oth­er peo­ple in sim­i­lar posi­tions. what i won’t do is lie and pre­tend to be a ‘by-the-boot­straps aver­age per­son’ like many oth­er sim­i­lar fig­ures who point at oth­ers and call wolf while play­ing sheep. I am com­plete­ly ready to set my house in order for my val­ues and prin­ci­ples instead of pre­tend­ing every­thing’s all good or that things can be ‘reformed from with­in’, even if it means tear­ing down the things that give me priv­i­lege. and even from all my pre­vi­ous work, you can see that i’m com­mit­ted and active.

A nation­wide plan: why should it be the conus­mer’s respon­si­bil­i­ty?

if most com­pa­nies and even con­sumers are ‘forced’ to buy and sell these things to stay afloat, and if these mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions would sim­ply give it to anoth­er dis­trib­u­tor any­way if one com­pa­ny boy­cotts all their prod­ucts, then the solu­tion must be sys­tem­at­ic, col­lec­tive, and polit­i­cal.

first: impose a nation­wide ban on the con­fec­tionery and bev­er­age brands sanc­tioned by the bds move­ment by law.

sec­ond: sub­sidise a tran­si­tion to the alter­na­tives for all stores equal­ly. to keep things fair, do not give dis­trib­u­tor rights for the new brands to the old com­pa­nies (even to sme’s like count­line) — instead, give them by draw­ing lots (ގުރުއަތުލުން) from oth­er small busi­ness­es that haven’t had the chance, and exclude the old com­pa­nies. this is to reset the mar­ket and equalise it; the old com­pa­nies’ time is over.

this way, not only do we pro­tect all our small busi­ness­es and stores from a heavy eco­nom­ic impact from the ban, but we can also com­plete­ly reset the mar­ket. this way, none of these mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions can just sim­ply sell through oth­er dis­trib­u­tors or retail­ers: they are banned by law through­out the entire nation. there are no more back­doors.

this way, the respon­si­bil­i­ty is nei­ther on the con­sumer or even indi­vid­ual busi­ness­es, large or small; instead, the respon­si­bil­i­ty is shared, and it the ulti­mate respon­si­bil­i­ty lies (as it should) with those in pow­er over our leg­is­la­tion.

i will write more about this lat­er depend­ing on the e‑petition out­come (whether it gets pub­lished for sign­ing or not).

but what about pro­duc­tion? that is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent ter­ri­to­ry.

A first step: stop man­u­fac­tur­ing coke in the Mal­dives

dis­tri­b­u­tion, sell­ing, and buy­ing are one thing. pro­duc­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing, on the oth­er hand, is an entire­ly dif­fer­ent thing. and this is uni­ver­sal we’re talk­ing about: sure­ly, unlike the retail­ers, cor­ner-shops, hawk­ers, or sme’s, they can man­age with­out the com­par­a­tive­ly mid­dling rev­enue from man­u­fac­tur­ing and sell­ing coke, fan­ta, and sprite, can’t they?

this is fur­ther a direct line of pro­duc­tion-rev­enue (even if it’s just bot­tling and man­u­fac­ture) to the coca cola com­pa­ny. this is an incred­i­bly mass-scale oper­a­tion too.

while we’re work­ing on my pol­i­cy pro­pos­al for a nation­wide ban on these things (and, if it does­n’t get approved for pub­lic sign­ing on the majils e‑petition por­tal for what­ev­er rea­son, it’ll become a pub­lic cam­paign), the very first thing we can do is to proac­tive­ly stop the pro­duc­tion of coca cola prod­ucts in the mal­dives. why are we espe­cial­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the pro­duc­tion stage of the sup­ply chain here?

just to be clear: you should not be doing any­thing vio­lent to any per­son or thing here. what you need to do is to put pres­sure on the gov­ern­ment. what­ev­er you may think, if there is pub­lic demand, and if it con­tin­u­al­ly asserts itself, the gov­ern­ment is forced to lis­ten to it. we have that pow­er.