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| Brand India: with ethics, empathy | | | Jayanthi Natarajan
Events and disasters, predictions of economic doom and dire intelligence of terrorist plots, electricity cuts and tightening of the belt are thoughts and stories which have become daily fare for us. In this background, it was a very heart-warming change for me to attend a special event, namely an opportunity to interact with management students from all over the country who had gathered to discuss how to build "Brand India". We briefly forgot about the divisions that beset us and, in a very worthwhile discussion, came up with "Five Es" which should ideally go into building "Brand India".
We first decided that the most important component to build Brand India, should be to build India as a "happiness brand", focusing not just on the monetised value but also the emotional sustenance that a successful brand gives its user.
We decided that the first "E" has to be Excellence.
There is no substitute for simply delivering top-grade products or services. Perhaps, the best example of building a country as a brand was that of Japan which, through the 1960s and 1970s, became a byword for quality and hi-tech manufacturing, so much so that Akio Morita, the legendary CEO of Sony, even called his autobiography Made in Japan.
Countries that were seen as laggards have changed their manufacturing reputation — their brand equity, to use management jargon — in a generation. In the early 1980s, South Korean brands were ridiculed as low-end and cheap. Today, they dominate our roads and homes and are seen as cutting-edge.
This didn’t happen due to just clever marketing. It followed a period of hard work, of upgrading human and technological skills, and of a culture that pursued excellence, whatever the cost and whatever the pain.
India has done it too — in information technology, in automobile component manufacturing. But two or three isolated sectors do not build a nation. For "Brand India" to have any meaning, for people to pick up a product that reads "Made in India" and instantly respect it, excellence has to be hard-wired into our system.
Our second E was Ethics.
The best brands deliver goods and services that are produced ethically. The entire business cycle is transparent and marked with clarity. "Brand India" will not shine as long as our business systems, our rules and regulations and even our biggest corporations, prefer the comfort of opaqueness. As long as India takes bribery, speed money and a lack of disclosure and openness as standard operating procedures for business, we cannot really hope to build a strong "Brand India".
The third E was Equity.
When we’re talking of GDP growth rates and alluring Purchasing Power Parity numbers, it does seem a little out of place to bring up issues of equity and access when 400 million Indians cannot read and write, and girls are pulled out of school early, married off before they mature and forced into a lifetime of servitude. Or, that there are eminently preventable diseases that kill millions every year.
To bring up such concerns is not to appeal to charity — far from it. Think of the 400 million Indians who never went to school, and the one million children, under the age of five, who die each year because of water and sanitation related diseases, as your potential customers, suppliers, contractors, employees. Think of the colossal waste of human capital we are allowing. The collapse of Lehman Brothers on Wall Street pales in comparison.
Consider an example. India is being promoted as a health and health tourism brand. Our best hospitals match the best anywhere, our doctors provide quality care to patients from abroad at a fraction of the cost. Yet, this country and its health practitioners cannot come up with a foolproof mosquito and vector control programme that will make killer diseases like malaria, dengue and kala azar obsolete!
Can India be a "health brand" with such inconsistencies; can any brand afford such inconsistencies?
And the students agreed with me that we can’t leave it all to the government. There are solutions in the private sector. India has a growing number of private hospitals that need patients. India also has an expanding health insurance industry that needs customers. It is, to my mind, a perfect mix that can, with cheap, low-premium policies, save millions of lives.
Somebody has to design this scheme, somebody with an innovative mind, a financial brain and a human heart. Perhaps, that somebody is among the thousands of students studying in our educational institutions today.
The fourth E was Empathy.
When people think of "Brand India", it must leave them with a happy feeling. They must cherish it, want it to be a part of their lives, have empathy for it. This calls for seeing India’s soft power — its culture, traditional systems of healing, entertainment industry and the very magic of its civilisation — as a brand builder.
Already this happening, and we all know it. Yoga is the rage in California. Hindi film music is heard from western China to northern Africa. Chennai’s very own Rajnikant is a rage in, of all places, Japan.
As Indians build global companies, we must remember that the world doesn’t want us to blindly mimic the West. They want us to retain a little bit of India in our global products and brands.
Like the lovable Ganesh figurine that has become so popular across the planet, our Indian-ness is our signature. It is what our customers and business associates look for — even in a globalised world.
When these four Es are married to the fifth "E" — Economy, the ability to produce goods and deliver services at low prices — the result is a miracle. A miracle called "Brand India".
Yet, like a hand needs five fingers, "Brand India" needs all five qualities, all five Es. I feel confident that the bright and energetic students I interacted with, and millions of others like them, the cream of our youth, will soon make these principles a reality, and take "Brand India" to the pinnacle it deserves.
Jayanthi Natarajan is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha and AICC spokesperson. |
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