Branding consultancies have developed methods to estimate the value of global product brands and regularly publish rankings based on those estimates. I teamed up with US News & World Report and WPP’s BAV Consulting on the “Best Countries” study to measure nation brands—and how nations’ brands affect their economies.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to be the mascot of ‘Incredible India’ campaign as the Tourism Ministry decided to do away with plans to rope in any Bollywood stars, including Amitabh Bachchan, for the role which was lying vacant after ouster of Aamir Khan earlier this year. [...] The ministry is planning to use -- for radio and audio release -- two types of videos of different durations where Modi had talked about the uniqueness and diversity of the country, the official said.

To achieve concrete policy objectives, however, Indian bureaucrats and civil society representatives will need to redouble efforts to ‘work on the inside’ and engage more closely with various Internet governance body mechanisms.

Twenty-first century statecraft, they say, is about “smart power”, the effective leveraging of both hard and soft power. [...] Leaving aside India’s soft power advantages and its hard power – both military and economic – which is poised to increase exponentially if it maintains its present trajectory, let us examine the concept of strategic communication within India’s policy structure. 

India’s Festival of Lights — is celebrated by Hindus worldwide, and often by Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists, too. The holiday is increasingly popular in the United States, where the traditional diya (clay lamp) symbolizing the triumph of good over evil is seen from coast to coast.