India's civilizational ethos has been an immeasurable asset for our country. Let us not allow the specter of religious intolerance and political opportunism to undermine the soft power that is India's greatest asset in the world of the twenty-first century. Maintain that, and true world leadership in promoting global security — the kind that has to do with principles, values, and standards — will follow.
60. The Thrilling Face of a Bold New India
WE ALL KNOW INDIA HAS CHANGED DRAMATICALLY in recent years: the country I left when I first went abroad as a student in 1975 would be barely recognizable to the young Indians of today.
To those who remember the old India, there's visible evidence of change all around, from the variety of makes of car on the roads to the number of channels on my mother's television set, not to mention the malls now sprouting like mushrooms in chic suburbs that used to be dusty and forlorn mofussils.
But what about the invisible evidence of change? How does one capture the transformation of attitude that's as essential a part of what India has become?
Sometimes a simple event encapsulates something far larger than itself. Journalists are overly fond of “defining moments,” I know. And one should always be wary of making too much of anything that transpires on that theater of the evanescent, the sports field.
But my epiphany about the new India came in December 2006, in just such a setting, during the telecast of the first cricket Test against South Africa at the Wanderers’ ground in Johannesburg.
India's new bowling hero, Shantakumaran “Gopu” Sreesanth, was batting, facing the charged-up South African speedster André Nel. “As soon as I walked in to bat, Nel said, ‘I can smell blood, I can smell blood,’” Sreesanth later revealed. His first ball beat the Indian tail ender all ends-up.
Nel then marched up to the young Indian, taunting him that he didn't have the heart to stand up to the big man's pace bowling. “You don't have the fire, man. You should have a big heart to play me,” Nel reportedly said, thumping his own chest in full view of the TV cameras. “You are like a bunny to me.” He then declared that he would “get” Sreesanth with his next delivery. Nel ostentatiously changed the field for the next ball, moving the short-leg fieldsman to deep square-leg and informing wicket-keeper Mark Boucher, in Sreesanth's hearing, that he would be bowling a bouncer.
The young Indian was not fooled. “I am a fast bowler,” Sreesanth said later, “and I was sure that he would bowl a length ball.” Sure enough, Nel charged in, believing the batsman was expecting a short-pitched delivery, and bowled a fast, full-length ball on the middle stump.
Sreesanth, having guessed correctly, stepped back and with an almighty swing hit the ball back over the fast bowler's head into the stands for six. What followed is now one of television's most memorable moments.
No one who saw it can forget Sreesanth running down the pitch in triumph, twirling his bat like a bandleader's baton, then breaking into a dance that combined both relief and exhilaration: the relief of the plucky kid on the beach who has kicked sand back into the bully's face and the exhilaration of one who knows that, after essaying so foolhardy a deed, he had gotten away with it.
Nel was left not merely speechless but defanged; the sheepish expression on his face was worth almost as much as the priceless, laugh-out-loud joy of Sreesanth's impromptu breakdance.
Everything about the episode emblazoned a story of transformational change. In the old India, a tail ender, confronted with a fast bowler's aggression, would have been cowed. He would have either backed away from the imminent threat of decapitation or (at best) put his head down and attempted to block the next ball.
He would have been grateful to have survived at all; there would have been no doubt that the foreign paceman would have maintained his psychological ascendancy. It would certainly never have occurred to the Indian to think like a fast bowler, and it would have been beyond imagining that he would decide to meet fire with fire.
Sreesanth's extraordinary hit over Nel's head for six encapsulated for me all that is different about the new India: courage, assertiveness, a refusal to be intimidated, a willingness to take risks, and ultimately the confidence to stand up to the best that the outside world can fling at us.
This goes well beyond the cricket field. Sreesanth's India is the land that throws out the intruders of Kargil, that (in the shape of L. N. Mittal's takeover of Arcedor) acquires Europe's largest steel conglomerate in the face of taunts of “monkey money,” that exports more films abroad than it imports, that challenges the traditional assumption of superiority by others, that wins Booker Prizes and Miss Universe contests.
It doesn't matter, then, that India lost the next Test, in Durban. It doesn't even matter that the entire series “went south” in Cape Town. Because this is not about cricket anymore. It's about a state of mind — a state of mind that will also change the Indian state.
What Sreesanth demonstrated was an attitude that has transformed the younger generation into a breed apart from its parents. It is the attitude of an India that can hold its nerve and flex its sinews, an India whose self-confidence is rooted in the sober certitude of self-knowledge (“I am a fast bowler,” said Sreesanth), an India that says to the future, “Come on; I am not afraid of you.”
Let us cheer on the prospects of this India, an India whose reach and imagination can soar like a six into the skies above.
61. The Branding of India
THERE'S A NEW BUZZWORD THESE DAYS about our country: “Brand India.” It's an idea, says the subtitle of a forthcoming book by London-based Niclas Ljungberg, whose time has come.
But what is that idea? What, for that matter, is Brand India? A brand, the marketing gurus tell us, is a symbol embodying all the key information about a product or a service: it could be a name, a slogan, a logo, a graphic design. When the brand is mentioned, it carries with it a whole series of associations in the public mind, as well as expectations of how it will perform. The brand can be built up by skillful advertising, so that certain phrases or moods pop up the moment one thinks of the brand; but ultimately the only real guarantee of the brand's continued worth is the actual performance of the product or service it stands for. If the brand delivers what it promises — if it proves to be a reliable indicator of what the consumer can expect, time after time — then it becomes a great asset in itself. Properly managed, the brand can increase the perceived value of a product or service in the eyes of the consumer. Badly managed, a tarnished brand can undermine the product itself.
So can India be a brand? A country isn't a soft drink or a cigarette, but its very name can conjure certain associations in the minds of others. This is why our first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, insisted on retaining the name “India” for the newly independent country, in the face of resistance from nativists who wanted it renamed “Bharat.” “India” had a number of associations in the eyes of the world: it was a fabled and exotic land, much sought after by travelers and traders for centuries, the “jewel in the crown” of Her Britannic Majesty Victoria, whose proudest title was that of “Empress of India.” Nehru wanted people to understand that the India he was leading was heir to that precious heritage. He wanted, in other words, to hold on to the brand, though it was not a term he was likely to have employed.
For a while, it worked. India retained its exoticism, its bejeweled maharajahs and caparisoned elephants against a backdrop of the fabled Taj Mahal while simultaneously striding the world stage as a moral force for peace and justice in the vein of Mahatma Gandhi. But it couldn't last. As poverty and famine stalked the land, and the exotic images became replaced in the global media with pictures of suffering and despair, the brand became soiled. It stood, in many people's eyes, for a mendicant with a begging bowl, a hungry and skeletal child by his side. It was no longer a brand that could attract the world.