Make in India – brand pride begins at home
Source: News Nation
My last post touched upon how, post Covid, we may increasingly appreciate and patronise Indian businesses and brands. This post, is about exploring influencing factors, and our resulting attitude to ‘Make in India’ and ‘Made in India’ tags.
The economy reviving potential of ‘Make in India’ + domestic demand, is possibly one of the more hotly discussed topics in the Covid corridors. The practicalities, counter-intuitively, might be the easier part – objective and measurable. The tougher fight, I feel may be in our head!
My observation over time is that we Indians, don’t seem to like ourselves - much! Hence, we are often self-deprecating, apologetic, and easily shamed about being ‘us’. Below, are two possible reasons for this –
1. Lack of unified ‘Indian’ identity –
India is a sum of many India’s. While united on a map, we live divided - unless we are abroad or someone of Indian origin makes it big globally! Possibly why Indians are so racist – mostly towards each other!
Indian racism – is a unique, inexplicable, inward targeted, multi-layered strain - caste, geography, language, community, skin colour, profession, religion, etc. This is so finely nuanced that only WE can understand, and correctly apply it – on ourselves (ironically, we quickly identify, and are increasingly offended by ‘conventional’ racism)!
Consequently – lot of energy is wasted focusing on our differences instead of similarities, breeding an ‘us vs. them’ trust deficit. Hence, we spend considerable time safe guarding ourselves, and outsmarting ‘others’ (anyone remember cockroaches?)
Effect on ‘Make in India’ – a reliable reputation for unreliability, myopic deal hustling, lacking standardisation and quality (we are improving, to be fair) to the extent that we, ourselves, are sceptical of the ‘Made in India’ tag.
2. Low ‘collective’ self-esteem –
Post-independence India could be likened to an adolescent teenager. Aggressive, ready to take on the world, yet insecure and unsure inside.
Post-independence adolescents – millennials are increasingly in the driving seat taking decisions of consequence. The display of competitive aggression has come a long way from Saurav Ganguly’s waving jersey to Virat Kohli’s sledging competencies. However, behind all the bravado, also hides an ‘unsure’ child who is still trying to overcome and outgrow at least two childhood traumas.
Trauma 1 - Colonialism – they say begins in the mind. We are still trying to break nearly two centuries of conditioning – of mental and physical servitude to the overlords. Well past the stroke of the midnight hour, Indians continue (decreasingly) to bow to ‘western superiority’ unless clearly proven otherwise (not being a hater here). Tourists being harassed for photographs is just one example.
Trauma 2 – License-Raj India – was almost like lack of childhood nutrition. Post-independence, we maximised our meagre resources the best we could. Consequently we became ingenious, but produced ‘basic’ quality, in limited quantities.
Effect on collective self-esteem – we are only just beginning to come into our own, moving up from being the ‘developing country under-dog’. We have demonstrated it in our cricketing aggression, IT and manufacturing ambitions, and now hopefully in post Covid opportunism.
Effect on Make in India – it’s tough to fight an internalised inferiority complex. We are indeed, capable of consistently producing great quality products worth their price. We just need to ‘believe’ in ourselves and deliver on that belief!
To summarise, I feel ‘Make in India’ is a mental battle! To win, we need, in pop-psychology terms – ‘self love’. For this, we must truly unite, and leverage our multiple heads! Nowhere in the world does a country have as much, and as diverse range of talent, intellectual capital, and problem solving ingenuity, at its disposal. We also need to get over our early traumas and move ahead with the kind of ‘escape velocity’ and conviction that got us to Mars on a shoe-string budget (the first-world enviously noticed alright). However, the success of Make in India, will only be as good as the number of Indians who ‘buy’ into it.
