India as icon

Incredible India, a land of gently undulating sand dunes and refurbished palace hotels? Or Ingenious India, awake and always on call, scripting software for a wired universe and fielding queries from all corners of the world? Or Ill-Prepared India, unknowing of its potential and the dynamics of globalisation? How is India to be branded? At an Ad-Asia forum in Jaipur this week, corporate leaders underlined the need to build Brand India. Mukesh Ambani and Kumaramangalam Birla cautioned that failing this, great opportunities could be squandered.

Branding a country is a key component in fostering economic growth. In doing so, a country sends out clear signals to investors about the resources, infrastructure and business ethos it is prepared to leverage. It embroiders a pattern of attributes to 8216;8216;made in8217;8217; labels, providing a competitive edge to its exporters. It makes a bid for a larger share of the ever growing tourism pie. And, most of all, it clarifies for itself and its people its goals and its place in the world. Nation branding has been done with varying degrees of success around the world. Scotland, wary of drowning in British identity, did it by simply coining the slogan Scotland the Brand. It was aimed at not only sustaining the edge its whiskies enjoy, but also at preventing amateur caricaturising. Elocutionists were despatched to Hollywood to help actors playing Scots get their accent just right. Thailand sought to banish uncertainty associated with the Asian flu of the late 8217;90s and to colour over the seediness of its sex tourism industry with the Amazing Thailand makeover. South Africa, with apartheid history but fear of ethnic confrontation still alive, has affirmed that it is Proudly South Africa.

All of this is, of course, not a simple matter of picking a seductive adjective. It entails a nuanced and coordinated strategy 8212; a collaboration between the business sector, the arts, the media and the authorities. Else nation branding will remain a marketing campaign, not an intricately linkaged constellation of goals and USPs. The Central government recently presented Shining India. It is a start. It implies a country on the move and impatient to leave behind stereotypes of a dithering establishment and Peter Sellers accents. But for it to click, it must be sustained with collective vision and concrete action.