doublethink

  Politics of Hope - Politics over Dead   New India, Young India, Aspirational India, Swachcha India, Atmanirbhar India – many Indias have popped up in the last few years. In quick succession, one India arrives while the other has not been even graciously discarded into the archive of the nation’s memory. Some of them live only to be dusted and polished, to be presented with gust and élan under a new tag (for instance, the earlier ‘made in India’ changed into ‘make in India’).    Almost, one feels, the force of compulsive commoditization is at work behind the swift pace with which new brands keep appearing. What does it say about the politics of our times? Why is there a need to brand a country again and again? A country, which obsesses over History right from within the whisper-soaking walls of the living room to that of the frenzied zeal of a mob that turned a monument into a pile of rubble, equally adores being recurrently decked in a new identity. Why is branding...