Walter White & The Grey Market

I was once part of a panel session on the topic of “Challenges faced by Indian Exporters”.During the discussion, one of the panelists, a manufacturer of Indian snacks, pointed out the ‘menace’ of merchant exporters in perpetrating grey market. Other empathetic panelists soon joined the chorus and pointed out ‘instances’ when their products were also dumped by unscrupulous traders causing massive damage to their brands.

As the format goes, if panelists identify a problem, they ought to suggest solutions too. And after 15 minutes, the question was flipped to me -"Mr. Mehrotra, in all your years of experience, how would you recommend fighting the Grey market in exports?"

I don’t remember verbatim what I said for the next 5 minutes but it went something on the following lines:

“In Hindu mythology, there is a mention ofSAMUDRA MANTHAN (churning of the ocean). The legend goes that the great milky ocean hadAmrut(Elixir of life) residing at the bottom. Gods couldn’t churn the ocean alone, so they allied with demons on the premise of equally sharing the nectar of immortality. As the churning began, a lot of valuables, divine objects emerged out of the ocean and were…