Goonj Raha hai Bharat, India is no longer aping the west: Prasoon Joshi and Amitabh Kant on brand Bharat

At the News18 Rising Bharat Summit 2024, Prasoon Joshi, Chairman of McCann Worldgroup Asia Pacific and CEO & CCO, McCann Worldgroup India and former NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant were in conversation on the Brand India and how Bharat is becoming the global destination for other countries to look at and follow suit. Furthermore, they discussed the goals behind the conscious decision to spin India’s presidency at the G20 around Brand Bharat.

Kant shared, “When G20 is held, it is normally held in 1-2 cities. The PM’s vision was that it should be a people’s presidency - take it to the people of India, every state of India. We so took it to 60 cities of India and used that opportunity to improve drainage, sewage, solid wastes, roads, etc. We also also used the opportunity to promote local culture, one district, one product.”

“We involved people of those districts, schools, colleges. We made it a pan India presidency,” he added.

When asked if the move from Brand India to Brand Bharat was right, Joshi said, “It’s less about nomenclature and more about what you feel, that is important. What is the ethos you feel? What does it evoke? It’s not just semantics, there’s science to it. When you pronounce Bharat, a different imagery is evoked and that is very personal and important for me. I would never give up Bharat as a name for any cost. It is deep-down, engrained into what we believe the country is.”

He added, “This doesn’t mean that India comes in parlance or if people refer to it differently in local languages. We have to understand the emotion and belief behind it.”

In English, we have a word called SMS. If SMS became a part of the Hindi dictionary, I would be very happy. But, if it makes its way to the language by killing the Hindi word ‘sandesh’, then I have a problem. ‘Sandesh’ works where only ‘sandesh’ can work. That cannot be replaced. It is all about coexistence and assimilation,” Joshi added. “We have to make sure that we infuse and inject life into words and bring back the once that are disappearing. That’s what I feel."

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Bharat, as a word invokes nostalgia. How do you contemporize Brand Bharat?

“Based on what India has achieved in terms of infrastructure, digitisation, climate change, structural reforms, etc, there is a huge sense of national pride. The vestiges of colonialism have gone away. We are not aping the west anymore, we are going back to our roots. We want to be a modern, progressive nation based on our own strength, our own civilisation. Bharat gives you that strength that we are a strong nation and our time is now. It has to aggressive, it has to be ambitious and has to be aspirational. That’s the message that goes out,” Kant said.

“Goonj Raha hai Bharat.. is a slogan for me,” said Joshi. Be it locally or internationally, everything about India, its culture, its sensibility, its pride, all of it is the centre point of conversations and is resonating.

"We are currently, no.1 in digitisation, no.1 in infrastructure, no.1 in growth. India is contributing to 20 percent of the world's growth. This is the time to work on branding. This time will never come again," Kant said.