DEFINING THE “NEW” INDIA: ELITES, POVERTY AND REPUTATION MANAGEMENT IN NATION BRANDING By Syeda Rad Rahman Submitted to Central European University Department of International Relations and European Studies In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Supervisor: Professor Thomas Fetzer CEU eTD Collection (17,135 words) Budapest, Hungary May 31, 2012 Acknowledgments This project was made possible with the generous support of the Department of International Relations and European Studies at Central European University, which gave me a travel grant to conduct the interviews informing my thesis in India in April 2012. Whilst the scope of any project is influenced by many conversations and insights provided by those whose names sometimes never make it into the content of the paper, they remain significant to the insights in any project. I would first and foremost like to thank my advisor, Thomas Fetzer, for his invaluable feedback with this thesis, and in keeping me on track. Additionally, I would like to thank John Harbord for taking the time to read through several drafts of my thesis. For the interest in my project and for your encouragement, I thank Kristina Grbich, Martin Romo and Sashi Kumar. My research in India was only possible with the generous hospitality and the connections provided by my hosts and good friends Kapil and Tara Gupta, Molona Wati Longchar, Kezia and Chiku Yepthomi, Shibani and Aaron Alter, Rohan Gupta, and Mehneer Sudan. It was your invaluable insights on music, dance, Bollywood, advertising, tourism, and your worlds that are represented in these pages. For the chai, chaats, and insights on contextualizing the lives of several Bollywood stars and continually providing invaluable perspectives on “keeping it real,” I thank Prasheen Lodhia, Kaustubh Kau and Kuber Sharma. For the numerous advertising executives, government officials, banking executives, movie stars and directors who took the time to interview with me amidst your hectic work schedules and introduce me to your spectacular private lives, I hope I have represented you well in how you expressed yourselves to me, and I am indebted to you for being so helpful. For sending me suggestions on what to read and how to think about poverty and advertising in India, I am grateful to the expertise and academic interests of Niharika Dinkar, Meher Varma, and Rasheed Ahmed. For double-checking my translations from Hindi to English were correct, I am indebted to Sreyasa Mainali. For the exceptional experience of being given the opportunity to call India home for four years, I thank my parents. I thank my siblings and cousins Falak, Zariat, Hammad, Rasheed, Hadidd and Neesa, without whom my interest in Bollywood would never have been realized or developed. My fascination with India started when I found out that even though several family members were influential in conceptualizing and realizing the independence movement from the British Raj, my maternal and paternal grandparents were either forcibly exiled from India, or had to leave in order to realize their commercial pursuits. Spending my teenage years in boarding school in the Indian Himalayas was exceptionally informative and influential to this project. For the crucial skills in maneuvering conversations in Hindi and haggling with auto-rickshaw drivers, and for being able to tell when I was being swindled, I am indebted to my teachers, friends, Groverji at Cozy Corner, and the triplet waiters at The Rice Bowl. CEU eTD Collection Finally, I want to thank the scores of nameless Indians who have shaped my perception of India over the last twenty something odd years. This project is dedicated to you, the nameless Indian, and to India, for being, and remaining incredible, magical, and mesmerizing, long before a nation-branding campaign deemed either of you so. 2 Abstract Since the tourism slump to India after 9/11, Incredible India was launched as an attempt to position itself on the global stage as a means of improving India’s image and reputation, in order to provide for more nuanced commercial investments and tourism from foreigners. In doing so, India has created a domestic Atithi Devoh Bhavah campaign, alongside its international campaign. This paper critically examines the implications of the Atithi campaign in India, in order to suggest that the underpinnings and ideals of alleviating poverty through branding India is at best, marginalized. Instead, attempts to sell the nation’s image are privileged at all costs. Because of the heavy involvement of India’s filmmaking industry, India’s nation branding campaign takes to the global stage as multi-faceted manner of privileging the voices and “realities” of India’s elite, often at the cost marginalizing the groups of individuals it hopes to affect through its efforts- alleviating India’s impoverished communities. CEU eTD Collection 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgments..................................................................................................................... 2 Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ 3 1. Introduction............................................................................................................................ 5 1.1 Nation Branding, Incredible India, Atithi Devoh Bhavah........................................................6 1.2 Data Collection.............................................................................................................................. 11 1.3 Chapter Organization.................................................................................................................. 12 2. Nation Branding: Theoretical Framework and Methodology.................................14 2.1 Defining Nation Branding within the Context of Globalization ........................................... 15 2.2. Imagining Communities in Nation branding ..................................................................... 19 3. Projecting the “Real” Incredible India: Setting A Voice and Tone for Brand India .......................................................................................................................................................25 3.1 Background of the Incredible India campaign ........................................................................ 25 3.2 Hierarchy and Otherness: Whose India is Being Sold? ......................................................... 28 3.3 Bollywood and Incredible India ................................................................................................. 35 3.4 Who is the Consumer?................................................................................................................. 40 3.5. Conclusion: Representations of the “Real” Indian ................................................................ 44 4. Attaining Izzat: A Tale of Reputation and Godliness .................................................46 4.1 The Background ........................................................................................................................... 46 4.2 The Brand Ambassador as God ................................................................................................. 49 4.3 Conclusion...................................................................................................................................... 54 5. Conclusion.............................................................................................................................55 Bibliography..............................................................................................................................57 CEU eTD Collection 4 “There is . no denying many Indians their conviction that the 21st century will be the Indian Century just as the 20th was American. The exuberant self-confidence of a tiny Indian elite not increasingly infects the news media and foreign policy establishment in the United States.” – Pankaj Mashra.1 “The Indian economy is doing well. Yet we were becoming the world’s back office. Our democracy is robust, yoga is globalized, Bombay Dreams ran on Broadway, Bollywood is hot, spirituality is all the rage.”-Ajay Khanna, CEO of India Brand Equity Foundation, at a breakfast meeting in Switzerland to strategize India’s entry into Davos (Holmes 2006)2 1. Introduction On a hot, sweltering Saturday afternoon in April 2012, a group of 200 carefully- selected Indian youth between the ages of 22 and 30 gathered at the United States Consulate in Mumbai to attend the 2nd Annual Young Changemakers’ Conclave, arranged in conjunction between the U.S. Consulate, the United Nations Information Center, and BinDass. 3 The conference lasted six hours and actors, politicians, fashion designers, journalists, sports celebrities, winemakers, and human rights activists delivered speeches in fifteen-minute increments. 23 of the 26 speakers spoke of how India has reached new levels of confidence, and the future of the country lies with the youth gathered in the Bombay heat, selected from a pool of 5000 applicants. The “cream of this new India.” as several speakers identified the crowd as, were being made to endure the blistering heat of a soccer-field sized lawn in a space which is technically classifiable as U.S. territory on Indian soil, showcases how India has truly triumphed and “arrived.” In this UN endorsed event, the attendees displayed shrewd self- awareness of the pitfalls of