The importance of soft power
US dominance is not about just its economic and military might. America's cultural dominance makes it a superpower. I mean we see american movies, listen american songs, wear american clothes and what not
Today, nobody can disagree with some or the other form of Indianness imbibed across the world - in terms of food, classical arts/yoga and sartorial inspirations in global fashion.
However I believe, the root cause of Indian govt.'s inefficiency to project our cultural soft power is lack of both consistent funding as well as long term vision. To compound to that our economic and military might is relatively nascent in today's world order. Our huge diaspora is a potential leverage (but not for political gains, as currently seen by govt.). But, I'm optimistic that as our nation grows more firm in development and stature, true soft power projection will naturally follow..
We see glimses of our soft power when a movie like dangal does very good business in China or events catering to Indian diaspora...but no concrete effort in this regard has cost India...
Some years ago, India started promoting Yoga on the world stage, but no sincere efforts are being done in that regard now.
One of the motive to establish AYUSH ministry back in 2014 was to make the world aware of Indian traditional medical practices like ayurved, yoga, unani, siddha, and homeopathy.
A great initiative but we lost the way too soon, or maybe moved on to other things.
I hope we get to see more awareness in the world regarding yoga
True..but why hasn't a country like India,with such a vast cultural diversity and richness able to exploit this aspect in there policy
may be because that wan't the main plan for the ones who charted the policies out , while only having a short term policy of introducing and lacking a far-sightedness or vision.