Sanjaya Baru | How we view ourselves and how the world views India

By the end of this week the world’s attention will be focused on India. Hundreds of journalists from across the world will be in New Delhi to cover the annual summit of the Group of Twenty (G-20) nations. New Delhi has been spruced up. The municipal authorities have done what they do best: painted the pavements, tarred the roads, placed potted plants along footpaths, and suchlike.

If one were to just drive from the airport to one of the major hotels hosting the delegates, officials and the media and then on to the venue, Bharata Mandapam, at central Delhi’s Pragati Maidan, then one would imagine India, or at least New Delhi, is a great place to be living in. The capital has a bridal look.

Over the past several months, the Union government has hosted dozens of events around the country with fanfare. Band, baaja, tamasha… Amitabh Kant, the Prime Minister’s G-20 “sherpa” and one of the architects of the Incredible India campaign, who is known for his professional skills in marketing Indian tourism, has outperformed himself. In Mumbai city alone, over a thousand crores of rupees have reportedly been spent to “beautify” the city, spruce up the venues for ministerial and official meetings and so on. Many state capitals have hosted meetings and events.

A chosen set of sarkari intellectuals were grouped into what was called the T-20, for Think Tank Twenty, and they have travelled around India and the world lecturing, holding seminars and selling the idea that Bharat is the “Vishwa Guru” and that we believe in our G-20 motto – “One Earth, One Family, One Future”. “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam”. So what if some people in Manipur and Muzaffarnagar are not so convinced about this “One Family” bit. It has been reported that in the run-up to the New Delhi summit, Indian universities, think tanks, and other such outfits have organised more seminars, generated more papers, hosted more lectures than any other G-20 country ever managed to do over the past 15 years.

To make sure they are also part of the circus, business organisations led by the Confederation of Indian Industry hosted “B20”, a G-20 business summit. No Indian business leader mentioned the fact that all the other G-20 countries do more business with China than with India. But they did not forget to mention that everyone looking for a “China-plus” must look at India, even though most Indian firms are still fighting shy of investing in new greenfield ventures, encouraging the government to

continue with public investment and production-linked incentives.

Given all the hype and hoopla, it is not surprising that a whopping 68 per cent of Indians surveyed by the American opinion polling agency Pew Research Centre said that India was “getting stronger”. After all, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been reminding us that we will soon be the world’s third largest economy, so what if we are at rank 139 in a list of 189 countries as far as per capita national income is concerned. Trumpet the good news, whisper the bad news. The advice is from the

Mahabharata -- “Aswathama Hatha Kunjara!”

So, yes, 68 per cent of Indians polled by Pew think that India is getting stronger. Hang on. How does the world look at India? The most favourable view is out of Australia, our newly-found partner. Down under 36 per cent of Australians think that India is getting stronger, but 54 per cent feel we are where we were, and 10 per cent think that we are actually weaker today. Most Europeans and East Asians, Japanese and South Koreans especially, more or less share the Australian perception. Only about a third polled in the United Kingdom think that India is getting stronger. Fifty per cent think nothing much has changed.

Perceptions get worse among friends. Israeli data reports only 29 per cent feeling India is getting stronger and 50 per cent not convinced, with 11 per cent thinking we are getting weaker.

What of our good friend the United States? A mere 23 per cent think that India is getting stronger. 64 per cent are not convinced and 11 per cent feel we are getting weaker. Opinion nearer home is even worse. In Singapore and Malaysia only 23 per cent and 19 per cent, respectively, think India is getting stronger, while 28 per cent (Singapore) and 27 per cent (Malaysia) think India is getting weaker. The data from even closer home would not be any more flattering.

It appears from the Pew data that the image of the country is tied to that of the Prime Minister. While an overwhelming 79 per cent of Indian respondents had a “favourable view” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, internationally only 37 per cent had such a positive view of Mr Modi. This particular statistic reminded me of what the late Pranab Mukherjee once told me, and I have quoted him before. The image of the county and the government, Mukherjee told me over a cup of tea in his room in the Parliament building sometime in 2011, is linked to the image of the Prime Minister.

So, if Pew is reporting a not so favourable view of India outside the country, that too in friendly countries, then it is at least in part associated with the less than favourable view people outside India have of the Prime Minister. So, while we may be patting ourselves on our backs because we think our country has “arrived”, being a G-20 summit venue, others may have a less than sanguine view.

What is, however, working for India and will continue to boost the country’s image is the hard work of our scientists and engineers in the few islands of dedication and excellence that have been assiduously build by successive governments over three quarters of a century. The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) has done more for India’s global image than all the pompous talk and colourful paint that has been invested in the hosting of the G-20 summit.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission cost the exchequer a mere Rs 615 crores. The budget for the G-20 summit in New Delhi was officially stated to be around Rs 1,000 crores. This excludes what has been spent by various state governments and non-governmental organisations. In terms of bang for the buck, Chandrayaan-3 has done more for India’s global standing than the entire G-20 circus.