Why Modi's Make in India is Made in China

From the Swachh Bharat campaign to Make in India, #SelfieWithDaughter to B4B (Bharat for Bhutan), the prime minister seems to have a catchphrase for every policy under the sun. After more than a year as PM, he has left an indelible mark on the body politic, especially the spoken politic. It does not matter whether the streets of India have become markedly cleaner or not - they have not - or that Gandhi's glasses figured with the Swachh Bharat campaign were shattered by Nathuram Godse's murderous hate. Much of political discussion is centred about the catchphrases coined by Modi's government - from a cleaner India, to smart cities, to a Ganga rehabilitation plan, to Digital India and Skill India.

A number of commentators have criticised this as "mere repackaging". Numerous governments have tried to rehabilitate the Ganga, the foundations of Digital India owe much of their base to Rajiv Gandhi, PV Narasamiha Rao and Manmohan Singh, and the National Skill Development Corporation was a brainchild of the UPA. While the critics have a point, they miss the wood for the trees. Every government builds on the achievements of the last one, and every politician claims the victories that his or her predecessor may have helped create. Moreover, there is value to shaping the public discourse. A leader has the job of defining goals and directing the energies of the government in the direction that his or her government determines is the best way forward.

Unfortunately, without strong support mechanisms and institutional investments such phrases largely remain phrases alone. A government shapes the public discourse not just by words (and selfies) but also with deeds. Modi may have modelled his "Mann ki Baat" radio broadcasts on US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Fireside Chats", but FDR also pushed through the most ambitious public works programme in US history. His "Fireside Chats" supported a massive public investment that has no parallel in history in any democratic government in the world. He is remembered for the road and highways built and the system of social security, the "New Deal", the one and only slogan associated with him.

So maybe the US is not the best place to look for examples. We often look too easily to Europe and the US, when maybe a better example is close at hand, in China. I was recently reading David Shambaugh's excellent, China Goes Global: The Partial Power, when I stumbled over the following passage, which deserves to be quoted at length:

"The Chinese government and CCP puts strong stock in slogans, known as kouhao…Kouhao are meant to simultaneously motivate the intended recipient audience and summarise the content of a specific policy. Although many governments and politicians use catchy slogans to describe policies, what I describe as 'slogan politics' and 'slogan diplomacy' are particularly used in communist-style political systems. Kouhao are not only supposed to convey policy and indoctrinate recipients, but the main purpose is to force uniformity of thought and language."

This description of kouhao bears an uncanny resemblance to how Modi's government has marshalled acronyms and slogans in the last year or so. But that is not where the similarity ends.

"Therefore, the appropriate response [Shambaugh continues] within the Chinese political system when hearing a kouhaois to parrot it back - to literally repeat it - so as to reflect internalisation and acceptance of it. In Chinese, this is known as the act of biaotai, "to declare where one stands." Thus, to biaotai to a kouhao is a ritualistic and significant political act, the essence of loyalty to the regime."

The above passage describes perfectly the act of many Indian industrialists, movie actors and other well-known personalities when taking part in the Swachh Bharat campaign in particular, but also in the "Make in India", "Skill India" and "Digital India" initiatives, not to mention the #SelfieWithDaughter campaign.

"Although many kouhao are neither well understood nor accepted, people nevertheless play the game by parroting the slogan - so as not to get into trouble for political deviance. This is a prime example of what the late Sinologist Lucian Pye referred to as an act of "feigned compliance." For Professor Pye, much of the Chinese political culture is all about the ritualistic political theatre of feigning (pretending) compliance to authorities. To biaotai does not mean that one actually believes or complies with a given kouhao or government policy; it is an expression of compliance through verbal conformity. It is a political ritual of pretension."

Bear in mind here, the Swachh Bharat campaign pictures, with the Ambanis, Salman Khan and various other notables. Do we see them on the street today? Do we even expect to? They feigned compliance, and then went back to doing what they always did. The BJP president, Amit Shah, himself said that bringing back black money was merely a "jumla", indicating that even he did not believe in it, and that nobody else should either. He was merely conducting "a political ritual of pretension." There is also the price of non-compliance. If people show non-compliance, especially women, such as what happened when actor Shruti Seth and activist Kavita Krishnan criticised the #SelfieWithDaughter campaign, they are immediately set upon by those (not necessarily of government or party background, but self-described loyalists) who are patrolling public discourse for signs of compliance with stated government policy. As for those that publicly dissent in a more obvious way - such as Greenpeace India or Teesta Setlvad - they are personally targeted by government authorities to the extent that in both cases the judiciary has to explicitly remind the government that dissent against the government is not "anti-national activity" and is a fundamental right enjoyed by every citizen of India.

Each and every point that Shambaugh makes about "slogan politics" in China holds true of Mr Modi's government in India today. If there is a difference it lies in the fact that India is a much more diverse country ruled by a democratic government, whose Constitution provides checks and balances that restrain a government from enforcing its will beyond a certain degree. Writing on China, Shambaugh notes how badly China has fared in its slogan diplomacy with foreigners. The citizens of other countries feel no need to play the game of feigning compliance in policies they do not believe in, and thus, in almost six decades the only two slogans that the Chinese have, to a degree, succeeded in popularising are, firstly, the Panchsheel policies (in which they received a great deal of help from India, which actually believed in the five principles of coexistence), and secondly, the "peaceful rise of China", a slogan that the Chinese government has backtracked on, since it feeds into the "China threat" discourse.

Here are then two lessons for this government, and for Mr Modi. The only way to leave a lasting impression of a slogan in a democratic polity is to, like FDR, invest massive state resources behind it. In which case there can only be a few slogans, or maybe only one, that will live on. To enforce compliance of thought and speech in a democratic polity on multiple slogans can be done for a short time, but it will be feigned compliance. The powerful will show up for a few pictures and then depart. The not-powerful will parrot the speech under threat of reprisals from loyalists, but unless they believe in it, the slogans will wither and die, and will become merely political posters that peel away to become the junk that a sweeper will remove and deposit in the trash can emblazoned by a big sign reading, "Swachh Bharat".