Brand India crawls to adulthood

In 1991, who could predict India to be one of the economic superpowers of the world. Even if someone did, he would have been dismissed as the harangue of a delusional optimist. Brand India then was rassling with too many problems and doubt to harbor any such ambitions about the future. India did not see itself as a player of significance on the international stage, but this was a view that was shared by virtually no one else. Brand India was seen through the lens of poverty, bureaucracy and still, a land of snake charmers.

It was a brand that bubbled with complexity and solicited the perpetual tag of a victim, a problem too intractable for anyone to seriously resolve while at the same time being in some unnamed arcane way. One visited India, not to find India but to find oneself. India was eternal, startlingly diverse, steeped in pessimism and contentment, seemingly ignorant to the entanglement it found itself embedded in. During the late eighties, some efforts at reform had begun, but that seemed to be grounded quite quickly. Overall Brand India evolved as a very coherent form of stagnation, where it had an opinion on everything but a plan for nothing.

There was a sea of change in 1991.The liberalization agenda dismantled a significant part of the complex network of barriers that kept India in the same place in spite of all its exertions. It opened the wings of the entrepreneurial energies of the private sector. But most importantly, it created for the first time a urge to look into the future with hope instead of apprehension and spawned the first generation to believe in India’s future. The earlier generation had grown up on endless hollow-sounding odes to India’s glorious past and its undying heritage and longed to regain a semblance of that past glory. Brand India believed in the future and most importantly the way to shape it. The change in mindset where one was always at the receiving end of circumstances to one where it was possible to mould circumstances to ones will is a critical shift that has taken place during the last two decades.

The growth of the economy has created headroom and a sense of agility among a large part of India. The fear surrounding the future has been taken over by a firm belief that one can substantially better one’s lot during one’s lifetime, and this has had a liberating effect on the Indian psyche. We can see this vertiginous new optimism in all walks of life- the sense of clothing, the experimentation with food, the buying behavior, the psychedelic ceremonies we enjoy– all of them speak volumes of an unshackling that has taken place. Brand India has found its voice, and re-discovered its spirit, this time not as a faded photocopy of the past but as a pulsating template for the future. And for the first time, India is getting the recognition, particularly from the West that it so obviously longs for.

Brand India may have turned 18, but is it quite ready to embrace adulthood? In its need for constant authentication from the West, where every pat on the back is met with swooning delectation in its trenchant trumpeting of Indian achievements, in its frenzied dissection of current events and its obsession with fantasies and celebrities, Brand India exhibits an adolescent infatuation with itself.

But adulthood is not far away. The global economic meltdown, the spiraling terrorist problem are the clouds that will darken the Indian horizon. At a more fundamental level, the composition of Brand India is likely to become more pressing as we move forward. Brand India is an insidious formulation, in which it gathers everything that is marketable about India under its banner, throwing out from its fold, those who do not form part of the India’s dream run. It conflates national interest with the singular task of appearing appealing to the world and in doing so, potentially skews our priorities. Also it is important to recognize the thin line between Brand India and Market India. Brand India in its current avatar is 19 years old, but the civilization called India is just a little bit older. The Indian story cannot concentrate on the economic growth for a section, but needs to be accountable to the colossal idea represented by Brand India.

Here lies the most important question. Why humankind needs Brand India? The world doesn’t need India because of its large market potential or the intellectual infrastructure. India is an idea that helps provide unique resolutions to the complex problems of today’s world. Eventually that must be Brand India’s calling. But now, even if it has turned 19 in its current avatar, it is still a teenager.
Such was the state nineteen years back that it was difficult to imagine reality but now in 2010, it is difficult not to dream.