Holy smoke and yoga, IT professionals and Bollywood are a few pieces of the giant collage
Uday Sahay
The writer is director, Directorate of Information and Publicity, Delhi Govt
While coining the expression - soft power – Harvard University’s Joseph Nye would never have imagined the kind of impact it would have on a country like India with an unbroken cultural continuity and ability to assimilate influences from outside. India has risen to the need of consciously branding itself through exports like yoga, cinema, ayurveda. Of late, the Indian State has been lobbying to open cultural centres in major capitals and has been organising courses abroad that teach appreciation of Indian culture. These products are offering alternatives to Disney and McDonald of the US and to Confucius and Chinese rock bands in the new world order. Destination branding for asserting soft power has created a buzz in the Indian diplomatic circle. Every who’s who is curious to learn its whys and hows. Appreciating the issue gets easier if some fundamentals of branding in the Indian context are put on the drawing board.
Branding is primarily a game of crafting a distinct and positive picture of a person, destination or an object in a person’s mind. In an over-communicated society, such as urban India, it is indeed a complex task to position one picture in minds cluttered with innumerable number of them.
The foreigners’ image of India is not the result of any conscious branding effort. It is only recently that we see some successful branding attempts made by the government and the industry to draw global attention to Brand India. Till not too long back, India’s image abroad was as a country of serpents and rope tricks, of sadhus and chillums and of gods and goddesses. It was the mystique aura that drew foreigners to India. This attraction was akin to a pickle in a meal which adds to the flavour but does not substitute the main course. Foreigners had an ambivalent image of India. But this ambivalence was for the Indian society, not its polity.
For the Indian polity, the picture was different. The maharajas mirrored it. The White Sahibs found such maharajas interesting to spend evenings with or to go hunting. But they were never keen to learn any art of administration or politics from them. Foreigners’ attraction to the Taj Mahal was actually an extension of the same psyche.
The third picture of India emerged during first few decades of independence through Satyajit Ray’s film like “Pather Pachali”. International acclaim that this film drew inspired many towards the image-rush. Pictures of hunger, unemployment and disease gushed out of such films. It appeared for a while as if India could be represented realistically only through such images.
Liberalisation in the 90s generated a fresh stock of pictures – of English speaking IT professionals. The whole world thought that anyone coming from India was a brainy IT professional. And their thought was not unfounded. In the top four IT companies of the US, more than ten per cent employees are of Indian origin.By 2000, few more gripping pictures of India emerged through yoga, ayurveda, cricket and Bollywood. Many of our yogis and sadhus travelled far and wide and received huge fan following in the wellness industry, whereas Bollywood and cricket rode the media boom. These were natural by-products of social and economic forces.
Now, let us see those branding attempts in India that were results of the efforts of the State. Liberalisation taught many developing nations to create its distinct brand identity through advertising campaigns. At the state-level, Kerala tourism department was the first one to start its destination branding attempt by launching a campaign titled ‘God’s Own Country’. The campaign, replete with images of oil massage, boat race, house boat and Kathakali caught the imagination of high-end tourists. The Kerala experiment was replicated at the pan-India level. But capturing the cultural and geographical diversity of India was a difficult task. Meanwhile, Malaysia was already singing ‘Malaysia, Truly Asia’ whereas Singapore was repeating ‘Live Upto Singapore’ phrase. Thailand coined ‘Amazing Thailand’ to position itself and New Zealand thrived on ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ branding. Passing through a labyrinth route of discussions, ‘Incredible India’ campaign was finally launched in 2002. Starting with Rs 50.71 crore in 2002-2003, its budget allocation reached Rs 110 crore in 2008-09. In October 2007, when this campaign reached New York as ‘Incredible India@60’, Americans were spellbound.
In 2006, CII, with support from the ministry of commerce, launched ‘India Everywhere’ at Davos to position India’s economic brand. Now that India is poised to host the best-ever Commonwealth Games in Delhi, its branding as an organiser of world-class games is shortly about to be etched in the cluttered mind of the world.
Uday Sahay
The writer is director, Directorate of Information and Publicity, Delhi Govt
While coining the expression - soft power – Harvard University’s Joseph Nye would never have imagined the kind of impact it would have on a country like India with an unbroken cultural continuity and ability to assimilate influences from outside. India has risen to the need of consciously branding itself through exports like yoga, cinema, ayurveda. Of late, the Indian State has been lobbying to open cultural centres in major capitals and has been organising courses abroad that teach appreciation of Indian culture. These products are offering alternatives to Disney and McDonald of the US and to Confucius and Chinese rock bands in the new world order. Destination branding for asserting soft power has created a buzz in the Indian diplomatic circle. Every who’s who is curious to learn its whys and hows. Appreciating the issue gets easier if some fundamentals of branding in the Indian context are put on the drawing board.
Branding is primarily a game of crafting a distinct and positive picture of a person, destination or an object in a person’s mind. In an over-communicated society, such as urban India, it is indeed a complex task to position one picture in minds cluttered with innumerable number of them.
The foreigners’ image of India is not the result of any conscious branding effort. It is only recently that we see some successful branding attempts made by the government and the industry to draw global attention to Brand India. Till not too long back, India’s image abroad was as a country of serpents and rope tricks, of sadhus and chillums and of gods and goddesses. It was the mystique aura that drew foreigners to India. This attraction was akin to a pickle in a meal which adds to the flavour but does not substitute the main course. Foreigners had an ambivalent image of India. But this ambivalence was for the Indian society, not its polity.
For the Indian polity, the picture was different. The maharajas mirrored it. The White Sahibs found such maharajas interesting to spend evenings with or to go hunting. But they were never keen to learn any art of administration or politics from them. Foreigners’ attraction to the Taj Mahal was actually an extension of the same psyche.
The third picture of India emerged during first few decades of independence through Satyajit Ray’s film like “Pather Pachali”. International acclaim that this film drew inspired many towards the image-rush. Pictures of hunger, unemployment and disease gushed out of such films. It appeared for a while as if India could be represented realistically only through such images.
Liberalisation in the 90s generated a fresh stock of pictures – of English speaking IT professionals. The whole world thought that anyone coming from India was a brainy IT professional. And their thought was not unfounded. In the top four IT companies of the US, more than ten per cent employees are of Indian origin.By 2000, few more gripping pictures of India emerged through yoga, ayurveda, cricket and Bollywood. Many of our yogis and sadhus travelled far and wide and received huge fan following in the wellness industry, whereas Bollywood and cricket rode the media boom. These were natural by-products of social and economic forces.
Now, let us see those branding attempts in India that were results of the efforts of the State. Liberalisation taught many developing nations to create its distinct brand identity through advertising campaigns. At the state-level, Kerala tourism department was the first one to start its destination branding attempt by launching a campaign titled ‘God’s Own Country’. The campaign, replete with images of oil massage, boat race, house boat and Kathakali caught the imagination of high-end tourists. The Kerala experiment was replicated at the pan-India level. But capturing the cultural and geographical diversity of India was a difficult task. Meanwhile, Malaysia was already singing ‘Malaysia, Truly Asia’ whereas Singapore was repeating ‘Live Upto Singapore’ phrase. Thailand coined ‘Amazing Thailand’ to position itself and New Zealand thrived on ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ branding. Passing through a labyrinth route of discussions, ‘Incredible India’ campaign was finally launched in 2002. Starting with Rs 50.71 crore in 2002-2003, its budget allocation reached Rs 110 crore in 2008-09. In October 2007, when this campaign reached New York as ‘Incredible India@60’, Americans were spellbound.
In 2006, CII, with support from the ministry of commerce, launched ‘India Everywhere’ at Davos to position India’s economic brand. Now that India is poised to host the best-ever Commonwealth Games in Delhi, its branding as an organiser of world-class games is shortly about to be etched in the cluttered mind of the world.
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24 seats – down from their previous tally of 61. In West Bengal – once the Red Citadel – the CPI (M)’s share of MPs dropped vertically, from 27 to nine. It lagged behind the Trinamool Congress and Congress in over 200 of the 294 assembly segments. Indeed the outlook is so bleak that in the 13th West Bengal Legislative Assembly polls in 2011, even the CPI (M)’s friends expect the once impregnable fortress to collapse as the Berlin Wall did in 1989!
another feather to the increasing Indo-US bonhomie and vindicates that USA’s crusade against terrorism is not essentially one against those which are directed towards the US only. Interestingly, the Indian government at large, the major political parties as well as the intelligentsia and the common man in India don’t seem to be too much concerned about this particular news and aren’t much grateful towards the US either for the incredible feat of FBI in unearthing this major conspiracy. One wonders what would have happened if this plan had succeeded. Reports state that this one was on its way to even dwarf the mayhem created by the ghastly terror attack of 26/11. So, essentially, we owe much to the US for nipping this plan in the bud. No wonder that there would be many a conspiracy theory that would be erected to drive home the staple logic of India’s left leaning pseudo intellectuals that this was all stage managed by the US for inching closer to India for business purposes. No wonder now that the next 26/11 type incident has been avoided for the time being, everyone would conveniently forget about it and not try taking lessons. Interestingly, reports even state that these two perpetrators were even involved with the planning part of last year’s 26/11. Further, if one looks at the series of incidents in the post 26/11 scenario, whatever actions are being taken by the Pakistan government against the likes of Taliban and al-Qaida or others is primarily because of the pressures from the US government rather than the same from India. No doubt India’s current Home Minister P Chidambaram has done a lot in improving the response capability of Indian state in the last one year and no doubt that in J&K and North-east the armed forces have been successful in neutralising several terror modules based on real time intelligence but those two parts of India are special cases with special powers being given to the armed forces. With respect to the rest of India, one wonders as to whether India would continue to only end up catching the foot soldiers of terror modules or strengthen the intelligence gathering machinery to that extent that it can catch the real ‘rainmakers’ the way FBI did this time. A huge conventional army is literally helpless when pitted against the invisible terror modules or the guerilla tactics of Maoists. It is being repeatedly proved in the fight against Maoists in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal. The designs of al-Qaida and its sister networks is far more sinister than what they look. An attack now on Indian soil would surely provoke India to wage a war against the already fragile Pakistan state and then the whole current outrage against the Jihadis over there would turn towards India, thereby benefiting the Taliban and al-Qaida. Pakistan army would be forced to withdraw its forces from Swat and Waziristan to defend the eastern borders thereby giving a breather to the beleaguered Taliban. And thus the best way to prevent such a situation to come is by preventing such terror attacks from happening, which cannot happen merely by increasing the size of paramilitary and the NSG. It can only happen through the setting up of a fool proof intelligence grid and a strong network with other nations for intelligence sharing. It’s time we become a little more rational. Remaining non-aligned didn’t help India ever. And with wonderful neighbours like China, fuelling Maoists and North-East militants,and Pakistan, the mother of all kind of Jihad, around, it has no option but to take sides. Under the present scenario, the US seems least likely to be a ‘fair weather friend’ only. And thus… India’s best friend in need.