The Hindu Business Line : Brand India: Who makes it?

What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Nowhere is this truer than in international relationships, trade or diplomatic. At least it ought to be so. One thinks that there is something essentially fair and square about such a principle. If you invest in my country, if your products compete with ours, the reverse will also happen and must. This thought is behind the agitation in the minds of our politicians and business leaders, after the recent news about what O rient Express the American luxury hotel chain said about an association with Tatas. What some felt about a possible ownership of the Jaguar brand name by an Indian entity is much the same. India is not an immediate hot sell worldwide. The attitude was described, on the Indian side, ranging between racist at one end, or at the other, old-fashioned, and not becoming a 21st century corporation.

For a level-playing field

Yet, it was not so long ago that one of our own leaders led a movement of righteous indignation against foreign brand names and companies entering India. Mr Rahul Bajaj, a doyen of the entrepreneurial group, demanded that government facilitate a level-playing field. Unfortunately, these things have a way of coming back to haunt one. If businessmen in every major country that does not want undue competition had their own way, barriers would go up, frustrating both trading and investment.

Yet, the worldwide trend is quite the opposite. We see more and more clamour for equal opportunity to compete. And this includes lawyers, chartered accountants, and doctors, all of whom would ideally like to practice abroad, start offices, and make more money. Of course, it would be nice if this can be achieved without increasing the domestic competition to intolerable levels.

The reality is that when you have not heard of some person, country or manufacturer, you are more than likely to go by stereotypes and hearsay. Reputations build on such flimsy grounds as movies, celebrities, or incidents such as Shilpa Shetty in big Brother. The word reputation in business covers much: How well we have delivered services or products in the past, how we have treated the customer and the laws of their land, how one’s own people have behaved in a foreign country and how one’s politicians have conducted themselves.

Each one of us is a part of Brand India. Our conduct is the process of building or eroding it. There is also a brand that is apart from all of us, which is the reality that people experience about us. Precision, honesty, strict adherence to quality, luxury standards, and so on, are not the automatic associations that India as a country evokes. There is no use fuming and ranting but once a negative reputation has been established, as with Japanese goods some 50 years ago, change is slow and difficult.

Brand value erosion

The likely brand value erosion feared by the hotel chain would not apply to their using Indian-made computer software or employing some of the smartest Indian brains. The poor image is alleged only where a luxury brand is concerned and it is a customer perception, a fear, which might well be wholly unfounded. It was irrelevant to the proposal made by the Tatas, as explained by Mr Krishna Kumar, yet the potential collaborator has a choice, and he can in a free market exercise it as he pleases. Of course, we have all felt the painful consequences of such perceived images and discrimination at an individual level for ages, although this situation is changing.

S. RAMACHANDER