“India’s global identity has moved from Gandhi to Modi,” said Shekhawat. In his view, that is altering the way the rest of the world does business with us and may well put a new spin on our tourism numbers for the next few decades. He has no hesitation in calling PM Narendra Modi the country’s top brand ambassador.
Talking in an interview, the minister put down this change in tone to ten years of work on our image. You can see it in the way Indians are treated when they are out in the world, and in the way our own institutions put our story across.
Tourism goals tied to brand shift
It is more than a matter of standing, the minister would have you believe; it is about getting people through the door. With some first-rate facilities in the offing, he figures we can take foreign arrivals from 10 crore to 100 in the run-up to 2047.
He was in the same vein in a post on social media, crediting Modi for the new look and voicing his 100-crore target. To Shekhawat, tourism is one of the things that will come out ahead of India’s economic upswing.
A few of the minister’s key points in short order:
– Tourist arrivals: 10 to 100 crore by 2047
– How we do at home is now part of how our missions are judged
– The old ‘Incredible India’ tag is being rethought as ‘Inevitable India’
– New infrastructure is set to be a boon for the sector
From Gandhi to Modi: what the minister argued
If you go back 10 or 15 years, you had some of our own in other countries who were a bit coy about being Indian, and would put themselves down as Asian first, Shekhawat said. He remembers the kind of thing you’d get in return when you put your cards on the table: ‘India! Oh, Mr Gandhi’.
These days, he says, it is a different story. Be it in the Caribbean or in America or in South and West Asia, the reaction is more likely to be: ‘India! Oh, Mr Modi’. It is a clean break from the time when our image was inextricably bound to the Mahatma.
Culture remains the core
So is it culture, or is it Bollywood, that puts us on the map? The minister’s answer is the prime minister, who is the number one brand ambassador right now. “I’m not making a political statement, I am just stating what the world remembers,” he said.
But don’t think for a moment that culture is any less important. For Shekhawat, it is in our heritage, our food, our festivals. A leader’s profile can only so much, but it can put a spotlight on that and draw in the tourists.
What changes on the ground
The government has made it a point of order to make tourism a hard number for its people in the field. Every mission is being told that their record will be read in part by how many they can bring in from their patch.
Is it as high a priority as IT? Not quite yet, he concedes, but the PM has been on the ball about it. He is of the mind that the industry will be in a good place as the country gets richer.
As for the branding, the minister sees it as a step up. We have ‘Incredible India’, and the idea is to make it ‘Inevitable India’ – to let the world know that coming here is not just an option, but a given.
