Santosh Desai
Santosh Desai comments on the formulation called ‘Brand India’, and examines the processes, modes of translation, acts of marketing, norms of the anecdotal that make up this entity. Desai shrewdly deconstructs the emotional ledgers that constitute ‘Brand India’ to recognize it as “a vehicle of participation with the outside world”. He uses everyday instances, drawing upon media, advertisements, and Bollywood to suggest modes of negotiation and circumvention of the traditional that make India desirable and accessible for consumption. While this is often characterized as an assertion of modernity, especially post liberalization, Desai draws attention to the complexity of the relationship between the market, class positions and identity construction in India.
