Nation building to nation branding: Evaluating the strategic efforts and its intensity under recent regimes in India

Nation building is a perpetual and never ending process. The effectiveness and intensity of it depends on the stability and visionary effort of leadership of a nation. India as a nation has been facing with various challenges in the process of nation building. The nature and extent of the process of nation building and its move towards nation branding as a promotional tool have been projected and materialised differently under different regimes in India. The term nation building has been placed in the realm of contemporary socio-political paradigm after Second World War. The term is also often used simultaneously with state building, democratisations, modernisation, political development, post conflict reconstruction and peace building. Nation building is a distinctive concept related to the development of the polity that is characterised by stability and people’s firm commitment to it. To put it in simple term the process of nation building refers to the creation of nation or a socially constructed or imagined community that seeks to be politically sovereign (Carolyn Stephenson, 2005). The term nation branding has become increasingly popular over the past few decades. This is a comprehensive process which refers to the strategic management of a country’s image and reputation on the global stage aiming to shape perception and behaviours among international audiences. It is basically building a strong national brand to showcase the strength of the nation in the global sphere. In this paper an attempt has been made to explore various aspects of nation building and nation branding. One of the thrust aspects of the work is to understand how the nation building in India has been shaped and potentially promoting the narration of nation branding. This paper also examines how nation branding initiatives used to attract investment, promote tourism and shapes the image of the country in the world stage. The nation building and nation branding process started in India mostly after independence witnessing various challenges like from partition to participation and from establishing a unified identity to incredible India campaign. However, while evaluating the role of different governments in facilitating the process of nation building and nation branding the researcher also tries to understand the policy measures under taken by them to intensify the process of nation building through nation branding.