The gentle persuader was Amitabh Kant, who shepherded the branding of India as a tourist destination as joint secretary in the ministry of tourism (under the tutelage of tourism secretary Rathi V. Jha and director-general of tourism V.K. Duggal). In this aptly packaged book, Kant describes the metamorphosis of this branding exercise between 2001 and 2008, a period that saw the country emerge as a contender in the global travel sweepstakes. Inbound tourist arrivals doubled during this period, and foreign exchange earnings nearly tripled. India made it to the covers of global tourism magazines and won awards galore.
Early on, Kant stresses that all this effort is "more than mere advertising". That’s not surprising, as much of the import of brand building comes packaged with mumbo-jumbo like "product reach", "greater socio-economic truth" and "integrity of mind, body, and soul". Clearly, Kant seeks to rebut the criticism that Incredible India is but an idea marketed well—and is a culmination of work done by civil servants over decades to brand India. In the ’60s, you had the World’s Fairs, a deft mix of commerce and branding. Later, there were the Festivals of India in the 1980s and so on.
There are also other claimants to building ‘Brand India’: the software industry and ‘Brand Bangalore’ immediately come to mind. Infosys chief Narayana Murthy typified this approach when he said, "For the first time in the history of India, we have received global acclaim. And this has been in just one field—software exports." That’s perhaps why Kant chooses to compare tourism with software when it comes to its job potential—he writes that it generates 250 million jobs globally as opposed to 20 million for software.
Then there are those who talk about timing: is the rise in tourism over the past few years only a corollary of the immense global economic interest in India, helped along by a spectacular rise in civil aviation, the hotels industry and e-commerce? To be fair, Kant doffs his hat to the "perfect environment". Even so, there’s no denying that Incredible India was significantly more effective than campaigns that preceded it.
For one, there are obvious virtues in consistency—a clear message that went across India’s 18 tourism offices abroad, one that wasn’t subject to the vagaries of government changes. Also on display is an unbureaucratic dexterity: tourism officials engaged with stakeholders (both within the government and the private sector) like never before. They were also alive to new possibilities: from the power of the Internet to sustainable tourism to even dashing off a note to Big Brother’s Jade Goody last year.
These were driven by fundamental changes in global tourism, argues Kant. Slow, independent travel is becoming the "in" thing, rather than the hectic package tour. Kant says he is not a great believer in the numbers game, arguing that it’s better to focus on foreign tourists spending more time and money here (Malaysia and Singapore, for instance, get more tourists than India, but our forex earnings are higher). This mirrors Kant’s ‘God’s Own Country’ strategy for Kerala. It has also led to tough choices: a chapter is devoted to how it was decided to not market India as a cheap medical tourism destination.
Besides partnerships in conservation, one initiative deserves special mention: the endogenous tourism project, in partnership with UNDP, which has done great work in seeding 24 grassroots sites across the country to showcase the "real India". Of course, India’s reality is building infrastructure that will match up with the brand experience. This is a useful little book for those working towards that goal.
