Brand Bharat: Not a land of snake charmers, but a powerhouse of production

In this context, let us revisit the Angus Maddison report of OECD which speaks about India contributing one-third to the world GDP from the year 1CE to 1750CE

New Delhi, Sep 05: What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of India?
When we speak about a nation, certain images come to our mind immediately. We connect each country with something in particular and the nation itself becomes a brand for the same.

When you say India, one can connect it with many things. A land of snake charmers, magicians, rope climbers, slums and poverty is not what anyone should be associating India with, as had unfortunately been the imagery created for India a few decades ago. Thankfully, this has come to pass.

The founders of Bharath Gyan, Dr. D K Hari and Dr Hema Hari, in their book Brand Bharat: Made in India, delve in-depth into the subject of what India has actually stood for, across millennia and explain how one should see India for what it really has been and can be for the coming ages.

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In the 1950s India was seen as a land of poverty and in the 1970s we spoke about India trying to build itself as a developing nation to become a third world power. In the early 2000s India was one of the top ten nations in the world. Today we see India in the top five nations of the world. It is a rising global power today.

Despite two years of COVID-19 there are no major starvation deaths reported and the nation today stands for aspirational growth, the Bharath Gyan founders tell OneIndia.

In this context, let us revisit the Angus Maddison report of OECD which speaks about India contributing one-third to the world GDP from the year 1CE to 1750CE (Common Era). This clearly means we had hegemony over world trade too from 1CE to 1750CE as having 33 per cent of the world GDP is huge.

Moreover, India had been enjoying this uninterrupted topmost rank in the leaderboard of world civilizations for two millennia and that is a humongous feat.

We must also make note of the fact that we could not have come to this volume of world production and trade on 1st January, year 1CE suddenly out of the blue, Hema and Hari say. They explain that there must have been a long build up to it for centuries or millennia.

The second point to ask is, what products were we manufacturing and dealing in, during those millennia?

The reality is far from the limitedly portrayed picture of India only as a Spice trade centre. Besides spices, India was also producing and trading in heavy duty products, such as iron and steel, zinc and alloys, cotton, indigo, sugar, perfumes, diamonds and many more items. This we have explained in our book Brand Bharat, the authors explain.

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When we see India, the image we have today is of a land of Yoga, Religion and Spirituality. While all these are inherent to India, let us not lose sight of the fact that these same people were industrious people as well too.

We, the people of India, have successfully changed the narrative from India being a land of snake-charmers and rope climbers to being seen as a land of Yoga and Spirituality says Dr.Hema Hari.

She adds that, in parallel, we also have to change the narrative that, while we are a land of Yoga and Spirituality, India has also been a land of industrious people who have produced sustainably for the world and amassed continuous wealth for their civilization.

It is in fact this Yoga, along with the sense of Dharma that gave the people of this land a good twinning of industriousness, ingenuity and spirituality which created sustained prosperity for themselves as well as sustained the environment around. So much prosperity, that it attracted the eyes of plunderers.

We were verily world leaders in production and trade.

This is the #narrativechange that has to come and the world should know India to be the industrial giant it had been continuously for millennia, till just a few hundred years ago. We Indians need to realize this, in order to get back to becoming the powerhouse of production in the decades to come, Dr Hari and Dr. Hema say.