Our good name

How does the world see India? For a country with vaulting ambitions of becoming a superpower — economic or otherwise — this is a question that constantly pops up. Indians want to be seen as strong and mighty, ready to take their rightful place on the world stage. Being a nuclear power has only added to that self-perception.

For the muscle flexers, there might be a lesson or two in the global survey done by the BBC World Service recently. It conducted a poll in which 39,435 people in 33 countries were asked to rate 12 major countries of the world on whether they have a positive or negative influence on the world.

One quick interpretation of the poll has been that India’s image has improved in the world. That is a bit of a stretch, because according to the poll, while 35 per cent of the respondents gave it a positive rating, 25 per cent gave it a negative one, and 41 per cent could not make up their minds. Which may be better than last year, but doesn’t vault us as a leading contender for the ‘good guys’ status. Keep in mind that another country which is liked and disliked equally is Venezuela.

In fact, there are many ways to look at the poll. For example, those perceived to have overweening militaristic ambitions — the US, Israel and Iran — were perceived adversely, while the ones that evoked the most positive responses — the European Union, Canada and Japan — were those with the soft power of culture, technology and perhaps, economic influence. So much for the bomb, you might say. But then China, France and Britain all score way higher than India.

Though such polls cannot be taken too seriously, they tend to become mantras for many who study them for small nuances that suggest that India has ‘arrived.’ If at all that
lesson has to be drawn from them, then why not take the message that India should seek to deploy its ‘soft power’ more effectively?

Here, of course, we already have such potent weapons as Bollywood, which has, over the years, found a niche in the global cultural space, our much-heralded spiritual heritage and our spicy cuisine that has adeptly ‘curried’ favour with a variety of palates all over the world. You can probably add to this list call centres, and hip, young,
best-selling authors.

This, in no way, will make people forget the India of snake charmers, elephants and palaces, of course, but those can be packaged as the perfect way to celebrate a wedding. Now that’s a great way to increase our positive global image.