Seth-speak: "We' would refer to all of us

The business today Crossfire, its third year as a brand, stood reformed and repackaged-as a one-to-one battle. But the Delhi venue was the same, the Taj Palace, and so was the holding rule: no weapons barred. Not fists, not boxing gloves, not even the bar-stools placed at the podium to honour the sponsor, Royal Challenge.

'Have we failed in building Brand India?' was the question, as posed by moderator Suhel Seth, making it clear that 'we' would refer to every citizen. Yes, said Alyque Padamsee, ad guru, citizen and master of theatrics, making a multiple-edge case before N.K. Singh, Planning Commission member and former advisor to the Prime Minister, got his chance to oppose the motion.

"India is known for IT and cricket. The rest of our brand image is zero" Alyque Padamsee, Advertising Guru

France, argued Padamsee, was known globally for 'love', Italy for 'design', America for 'Hollywood', Great Britain for the 'royal family' and Brazil for... 'football'. And 'Brand India'? For it and cricket. "The rest of our brand image is zero," he lamented. "At least in Nehru's time, we were leaders of the Non-aligned Movement. We had a powerful brand at the un and originally our image was Gandhian Tolerance and Non-violence"-shattered by worldwide media reports of violence in "Gujarat and Kashmir and almost every single place". The good news, he added, was that India had the planet's "finest aqal-mand people" and could thus project itself as the 'Brain Box of the world', with the Silicon Valley of Bangalore, the economic wisdom of Nobel laureates, the trans-Asian appeal of Bollywood, the institutionalisation of engineering excellence and the management talent of the India-origin pool, all at the brand's disposal to deploy.

Padamsee's suggestion: hold a stimulating international idea-fest on 'The world in 2050', and project the country's brains globally.

Some of those points actually go against the motion, responded Singh, thanking Padamsee for helping with his own case. But, not being an adman, he'd rather be real than fantasy-led. For the Liril waterfall dream is no good without water supply, and Kama Sutra's pleasure principle is useless without bedroom privacy-unavailable to millions of Indian couples. And the 'Brand India' reality, he added, was that India had repositioned itself every decade since 1947-in terms of values, systems and the national psyche. From a poor starving country, India had become a nuclear power. And if India was now on a "winning spree"-the "home of the world's knowledge economy"-it didn't just happen on its own. It took decades of fostering IIT excellence, for example, and of wilful evolution of the national psyche.

"The Indian psyche is deep, complicated and living in a multitude of times" N.K. Singh, Member, Planning Commission

Moreover, argued Singh, "The branding of countries is a far more complicated process than an advertisement campaign." Brand India is an amalgam of kaleidoscopic images, irreducible to market analysis. "When you ask a question, it evaporates into space because the Indian psyche is deep enough, complicated enough, and living in a multitude of times simultaneously." None of this, he cautioned, should be oversimplified by picking and projecting just one aspect of the country. Even when the brand image is that of 'Mother India', he contended, it actually conveys a multiplicity of images. "Welcome to India of 2003," concluded Singh, with muted triumphalism, "because we know that the wars of this century will be fought on the power of ideas and won on ideas."

Time to get ruthless, announced Seth, urging the two to go for each other. How, for example, would Padamsee respond to being made out to be a "cynical crybaby"? Well, by clarifying that while Product India was good, and while national development was all very good as well, precious little had been done to project the country's uniqueness internationally. But this, to Singh, was a "myopic interpretation of the topic", since India was fine with its multifaceted self, and national branding projects, a la 'Cool Britannia', were far too simplistic to hold any meaning.

The brand image matters, shot back Padamsee-to economic development. After all, "a tiny little country like Singapore attracts 10 to 20 times more foreign investment than India", and much had to do with how India was seen by the decision makers of the world.

"That's the problem with ad gurus," scoffed Singh, "oversimplification." Oversimplification? Brand India is in crisis, pleaded Padamsee, and needs urgent redressal.