What are the principal
challenges and resources available to India’s public diplomacy efforts?
India has a population of over a billion people. And its
geographic location makes it capable of great influence in its region. This presents a great challenge to India but
with work it could also be one of its greatest strengths in promoting its
public diplomacy agenda. One of the
influential aspects to India’s public diplomacy is its cultural resistance to
influence. India’s decision in 2005 to
join the UN democracy fund is an example of this dualism, a desire to modernize
and take on an active role internationally and a belief in not forcing your
ideology on others. In his evaluation of India’s public diplomacy
Christian Wagner notes that “India’s new
engagement seems to be a compromise between growing Western demands for a more pro-active policy to support
democracy and the Indian approach of not ‘exporting ideology’”.
There are three major problems
for Indian public diplomacy. The most
prevalent is the lack of consistency between the messages being sent and
reality. For example, according the
Freedom House study India’s Press is considered only partly free. This contradicts the message that India is
trying to send of being the worlds’ largest democracy and helping to shape
other countries systems. In order for
India’s public diplomacy to be more effective they also must make internal
ajustments.
Secondly a major deterrent to expanding their pubic
diplomacy programs is a lack of staff in government positions. They are barely able to keep current programs
running, let alone having the time to develop new programs or expand current
ones. They simply lack the time to
implement creative solutions to expanding their public diplomacy. This leads to the final problem, the
population size. The limit of the
government to expand its public diplomacy is due in part size and the sheer
number of people requiring services.
While the large population is a deterrent to the growth
of India’s public diplomacy it is also its greatest assets. It’s large diaspora community is already
inadvertently conducting citizen diplomacy.
India has an enormous youth population and by mobilizing them and
creating opportunities for citizen participation they could reach many more
people.
India’s rapid population growth has also led to rapid
development. There are many NGO’s in
India’s cities that have successfully helped managed this development. Their successes can be shared with other
developing nations as was recommended by the project lead Maya Babla in the
study on India’s public diplomacy. Their
nation’s relative success in handling the many pressing issues brought about
this rapid population growth, and also their failures presents a unique
opportunity to connect with other nations experiencing similar difficulties in
order to share ideas on tackling the problems created by a population boom.
Finally India needs to focus more attention on their
unique culture. While Bollywood produces
more movies than Hollywood they aren’t effective in articulating the same
cultural goals that U.S. movies do. By utilizing
the “robust media system” that they already have in place internally they can
better promote India. They just need to
coordinate more with those locally that are already conducting or have the
ability to conduct Public Diplomacy in order to turn these local programs into something that can influence the international community.
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