Brand India

The need for repositioning Brand India

India is a few steps away from being the country that the East would look upon. The

slowdown in Chinese growth, a jittery Eurozone trying to contain the damage of a

prospective Greece exit; the time is ripe for India to project itself as a global leader and

attract more investments to spur growth. A lot of initiatives are being taken by the

government such as the popular Make in India campaign, Digital India and Incredible India,

which has been there for quite some time now. IMF and World Bank have predicted that

India is set to overtake China in growth rate by 2016. The single most important campaign of

the since the new government assumed power has been the Make in India campaign.

Make in India - Hannover 2015 Theme

The make in India campaign has provided the much required facelift for India, with the PM

himself pitching to various companies to manufacture in India during his foreign tours. As a

result, a lot of action has been happening, especially in the equity markets. This is evident

from the fact that the Sensex soared to an all-time high of 30,000 in March this year, before

correcting itself to the 28k levels. Though the idea behind the campaign is pragmatic,

considering the demographic dividend that could be reaped, there is a lot of work to be done

to reposition brand India as an ideal investment hub. One of the bitter critiques of this exportled strategy was the RBI governor, Raghuram Rajan. “The world as a whole is unlikely to be

able to accommodate another export-led China,” he had said. One cannot agree more with his

opinion that India is in dire need of a “Make for India” campaign rather than a “Make in

India” campaign. There are two reasons why we should adopt a different strategy.

Firstly, India is not ready for it yet. Though FDI inflow has increased by 48% from last year’s

figures, infrastructure bottlenecks still persist due to which most of the projects have been

stalled. The...