Last Friday, the Minister of State (Independent Charge) for the Ministry of Commerce & Industry, as well as a Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs under the Ministry of Finance, Nirmala Sitharaman, was the chief guest at the finale of Lessons in Marketing Excellence (LIME), an inter B-school case study contest run jointly by CNBC-TV18 and Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL).
For the finale, the case the students were tasked with was Make in India. (Which is why we had invited Ms Sitharaman; her ministry oversees the initiative.) Before, during, and after the event, many conversations centred on the ‘slogan’ culture of the Modi government: Swachcha Bharat; Make in India; Start Up India.
We’ve got the slogans; where’s the action?
As I was in Delhi for a couple of days before the event, I had occasion to talk to friends involved in the communication of Make in India and Start Up India about what was happening (what ‘action’) with regard to these two ‘slogans’.
I heard stories of all stakeholders (including Ms Sitharaman, Amitabh Kant and the senior-most bureaucrats) working from early morning to late into the night, conducting and participating in several meetings in parallel. I heard about infectious enthusiasm to get things right and the pressure of seemingly impossible deadlines. But where’s the action?
I cut back to April 2011, when Anna Hazare went on his first fast for the Lokpal Bill, the beginning of a tumultuous year that saw Parliament, in December 2011, being forced by Anna and public opinion into working beyond midnight. For much of the next three years, the only topic of conversation, whether in a gathering of schoolmates or at events of India Inc., was corruption. There was no slogan or hashtag for corruption, but that was all the nation discussed.
Since the Modi government took charge and coined slogan after slogan, conversations changed. In a way, citizens of India began dreaming. Could we really have a clean, sparkling India? Could India become a manufacturing powerhouse? Could we create a startup culture that became the envy of the rest of the world?
Conversations about corruption have ceased.
The slogans have already transcended beyond slogans; they’ve become conversations.
In many cases, the slogans have spurred India Inc. (and others) into action as well. HUL has added momentum to the Lifebuoy-led Help A Child Reach Five effort with the Haath, Munh, Bum campaign. Dettol has launched activations in the same space. And so on.
In her eloquent and inspiring keynote at the LIME finals, Ms Sitharaman underlined that her ministry saw the government’s role in Make in India as an enabling agent, creating an environment, including regulation and licensing, that encouraged Indians to Make in India.
A great catalyst for enabling anything is conversations.
The conversations could be positive, negative, praising or scathing.
The important thing is that you need to get conversations started.
Action follows – even if the lag is such that we get impatient with the speed — and cynicism and scepticism creeps in.
A few days ago, I read of a wonderful initiative launched by a handful of students from Usha Pravin Gandhi College. They decided to clean and transform the filthy Bandra East railway station. As they began sweeping muck in the railway tracks, others, joined in.
Kids from nearby slums, workers from the BMC, and the original team made the station Swachcha.
At the end of the day, for this little team, Swachh Bharat was more than a slogan. It was real.
This team heard a slogan, had conversations about it, and decided to act.
Hopefully, all these slogans, as we talk about them and then act, will change from being mere slogans.
The writer is Editor, Storyboard.
