How to renovate India’s soft power

Source- The post is based on the article “How to renovate India’s soft power” published in “The Indian Express” on 10th June 2023.

Syllabus: GS2- International relations

Relevance- Issues related to India foreign policy

News– The article explains the areas where India can work to increase its soft power.

Which are the areas that are important for increasing India’s soft power?

Universities: The intellectual decline of universities like Shantiniketan, Delhi, Allahabad, Presidency, JNU, represents failed governance and strategy. Harvard’s $51 billion endowment is due to partnership with alums and philanthropists.

Our university renewal has begun. IIT-Mumbai has a business school, IIM-Bangalore is starting undergraduate degrees, and IISC is starting a medical school.

Non-profit universities like Ashoka are now strong alternatives to studying abroad.

Think tanks: India has a weak layer between academia and journalism that focus upon research, evidence, and second-best choices. Good government requires a steady stream of good ideas.

Their challenges in India include the lack of lateral entry into government, domestic philanthropic preferences, suspicion of foreign funding, and weak legitimate corporate advocacy.

These challenges are reducing. Policy legitimacy for think tanks will grow our marketplace for policy ideas and generate global soft power.

Government schools: It’s embarrassing that only 50% of India’s kids attend government schools. If anything should be free with quality in a society, it is primary education.

Unlike China, India’s economic transition is happening to service jobs. Service sector requires foundational skills of literacy and numeracy.

NIPUN Bharat  mission aims for the universal acquisition of critical foundational skills by 2026.

Publishers: The dominance of the West in publishing books and academic journals is built on history, skills and resources.

There is a lack of highly-ranked Indian academic journals. The peer review system is based on soft relationships and technology that are not easily accessible. Almost 50% of peer-reviewed hypotheses are unreplicable or get retracted.

Translation: ‘State of Indian Translations Report’ suggests only 5,600 Indian language books exist in English.

Translation scale is a uniquely Indian problem. It is further complicated by the complexity of translating books among Indian languages.

The Bhashini Project of the Ministry of IT, the AI4Bharat Centre at IIT-Madras, and the Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti of the Ministry of Education will unlock our languages for ourselves and for the world.