SOFT POWER

1. Background

• India is an enlightened nation with a vibrant soft power inheritance. The country is vividly conscious of the weight of its cultural engagement and requires putting in little more effort to present its culture fascinating to the corners of the world.
• The following notion of soft power is original and essentially natural which is harmonious with the abundant history of India as both a country of notions and thoughts alongside amicable cultural dissemination. 
• Soft power brought with it an impression of an upright hovering sphere and reliability, which motivated the developing nations across the world after seeing India’s position.

2. What is soft power diplomacy all about

• Power in international relations has traditionally been understood in the context of military and economic might.It is known as Hard power (which is quantifiable) 
• Hard power is deployed in the form of coercion: using force, the threat of force, economic sanctions etc. 
• Soft power is the ability to shape the preferences of others through appeal and attraction. 
• The three pillars of soft power are political values, culture, and foreign policy. 
• India's Dimensions of Soft Power- Ayurveda, Yoga, Buddhism, Cricket, Culture, Democracy, Diaspora, Entertainment: Bollywood, Food etc.

3. Historical pluralistic soft power possessed by India

• India has an optimistic vision of a relatively pluralistic government, non-violent, and liberal with a non-threatening global leadership. 
• Distinguished personages like Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, literature, music, dance, software industry, Ayurveda, etc., produce an extraordinary array of soft power assets that portray the attractiveness of India to the foreign populace. 
• The importance of respect, harmony and fraternity are the essences that Indians are recognized for, with Ashoka, Buddha and Gandhi standing as principal representatives. 
• Mythological epics such as Mahabharata and Ramayana are compared with the great Greek writings like Odyssey and Iliad. 
• India was appreciated as the ‘Golden Bird’ between 1 and 1000 AD for its GDP, which was also ahead of China back then. This eventually brought migrants, traders and invaders like ‘Alexander the Great’ to India.
• Over the centenaries, India has granted shelter, religious and cultural freedom to Jews, Christians, Muslims and several other faiths. India’s history and culture is her legacy to the world that displays the metamorphosis of India’s chronicles, how India harmoniously assimilated different religions yet never lost track of its own culture and history.

4. Factors threatening soft power possessed by India

• However, India being a country rich in soft power resources lacks an institutional ecosystem to harness soft power and further its national interests in the international sphere. 
• There have been blemishes due to major quandaries such as corruption, poverty, and violence against women, hostility to business, pollution in urban areas, caste-discrimination and gender-inequality that has made India fare poorly in the elements of national attraction.
• Also, there are numerous factors at play forcing what feels like an underperformance in the Soft Power 30 index for India such as the western bias that places India at a relative disadvantage as advanced economy nations hold a lead. 
• The index is a composite pattern aggregating data across a different range of soft power metrics to create a separate score for every nation. 
• The reduced performance in various sub-indices of the report hauls down a nation’s overall score. 
• However, it doesn’t mean such a country will not have precise might and valuable instruments in its display of soft power assets.
• To conclude, India should figure out its strengths if it wants to resurrect its national image. 
• Its ancient wisdom and spirituality should encourage other nations to acknowledge that India can have a great leadership role in the world.
• India’s ability to tell a “better story” has not been very effective in delivering desired outcomes notably. 

5.Way Forward

• The nation’s potential of soft power if implemented certainly would enhance India’s more exalted position, in making it well disposed and flourishing in the world. 
• In the mounting multipolar global order, India definitely has the potential and holds immense opportunities to elevate its position further as the ‘rising global soft power’ that can further pave the way for the country to become a ‘soft power-superpower’ of the 21st century.