It is said that with every penny you spend, you make a choice towards the kind of world you want. A premise truer in the 21st century more than any other, especially when viewed from the lens of boycott culture, that has been gaining exponential popularity in the light of recent global developments.
As the calls for boycott of Turkey and Azerbaijan as tourist destinations reached a crescendo in the past week in India, it once again brought the boycott culture back into national conversation. Does it work? More importantly, is it always ethical and immune to misuse? While there may not be clear answers, there are several instances where the boycott calls snowballed into mass movement and had the intended effects it set out to achieve.
When the boycott or cancel culture works
Last week as Turkish military transport aircraft landed in Pakistan and as Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry backed the neighbours through official statements, Indian social media was filled with feeds asking for boycott of both.
The hashtags and posts came from a place of empowered sense as both the nations attract millions of Indian tourists each year. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. As per figures quoted by Cox & Kings, in 2024 around 2.4 lakh Indians visited Azerbaijan and 3.3 lakh visited Turkey. As per Turkey’s tourism board, the country’s total tourism revenue from all the global tourists reached a high of $61.1 billion in 2024.
Even though reports quoting cancelled bookings to predict early trends galore, any conclusion on how much do the boycott calls actually translate to dip in footfall will have to wait. Many did not have to jog their memory to recall very similar boycott calls being made for Maldives in January of 2024. A political clamour and social media furore resulted over a few Maldivian ministers ridiculing PM Narendra Modi. As divisive opinions followed on media platforms, a few called the boycott as “weaponisation of tourism.” However, did the numbers to Maldives drop? In 2024, Indians visiting Maldives came down to 1.30 lakh from 2.09 lakh in 2023, thereby resulting in a decline of roughly 38 per cent.
A bonafide tool of protest or a weapon of intolerance?
Boycott of nations, institutions and governments has widely branched out to boycott calls of people, industries and companies. Indian history, in fact the making of the nation, is replete with successful and powerful boycott calls. Mahatma Gandhi calling for mass boycott of British goods shaped the freedom struggle and changed the course of the nation.
However, lately boycott has become a hashtag and has long been clubbed with the cancel culture of millennials and Gen Z where it is another trending tag and sometimes for reasons insignificant and highly casual.
Ever since the Pandemic, #BoycottBollywood seeking a complete audience withdrawal from the Hindi film industry, not just started gaining pace but power enough to have an impact on the box office collections. In 2022, reportedly no production house could break even with their collections and films like Aamir Khan’s ‘Laal Singh Chadha’ directly faced the brunt of boycott calls. At the time, the movement made many question whether boycott was a legal means of registering a protest or just a weaponised tool of bias and intolerance.
In December 2022, Madhya Pradesh’s home minister objected to a song wherein the heroine is wearing a bikini in a certain colour; a boycott campaign followed.
Also read: Misplaced outrage: Khan maligned solidarity with subtlety
A 2023 study by Joyojeet Pal, assistant professor at the University of Michigan, revealed that between August and mid-September, as many as 1,67,989 Twitter accounts used the hashtag ‘Boycott Bollywood’ at least once, signifying its reach. Given the heady, reckless popularity of boycott trends, there is no dearth of satirical X memes, asking “So what are we boycotting today?”
A global phenomenon; at times organic, sometimes coordinated
From protesting injustice to advocating for change, boycott has been a weapon, a tool and a power tactic in the hands of an average Joe walking down the road; which makes it arguably the next democratic thing after voting.
Whether co-ordinated or not, the boycott attacks have impacted corporate giants cutting across national borders.
Globally, Israel’s war on Gaza has coincided with calls for boycott of corporations supporting Israel. Growing calls for boycott of American coffee houses across the Middle East and South Asia brought many of them down to their knees. After intense consumer backlash, Starbucks specifically suffered from declining sales, making the company rope in a new CEO and deny claims of either supporting Israel or “any other government or military operation.”
By December of 2023, the Seattle-based coffee company’s share price declined by about 9 per cent, eroding roughly $11 billion in its market cap. McDonald’s suffered a similar brunt, too. Perhaps that is why American singer-songwriter Conor Oberst once compared the boycott to, “an imperfect weapon.”
“A boycott is inherently a blunt instrument. It is an imperfect weapon, a carpet bomb when all involved would prefer a surgical strike.” It is, however, definitely less violent than a surgical strike.
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