soft power is the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments joseph nyecurse the devil for political stonewalling which saw india bypass the manufacturing revolution but thank god for liberalisation that a young and enterprising india has woken upthis transition was best illustrated six years ago by us management guru thomas peters at a conference in india fifteen years ago not one in 1000 americans could spot bangalore on the map today six out of seven think bangalore is the only city in india they basically believe 1 billion people live in bangalore much of the credit for that as has become legend was because of a bunch of youngsters who dared to dream then over two and a half decades ago india was still under the dark shadow of the permit raj infosys mentor n r narayana murthy nandan nilekani and five others had to jump through the hoops in murthys words it would then take them one or two years and about 50 trips to delhi to import a computer worth 1500infosys was essentially an idea that mutated into a revolution even as its founders were charting out plans the potential of indias vast physical and human resources to become a world power was being foreseen thinkers like octavio paz believed the country which gave the world buddha gandhi and the concept of zero in mathematics could find its own way to economic developmentas history bears it no component of indias soft power has been as farreaching influential and beneficial as it in a sense independent indias show of soft power began with nehrus global peace initiatives in the 1950s that and the dalliance with nonalignment didnt bring much distinction but there were signs of cultural strengths that could appeal from within the confines of the socialist setting raj kapoors aura immortalised by the chaplinesque awaara earned him a following from tehran to tashkent around that time mahesh yogi introduced transcendental meditation to the west and became the beatles spiritual guru yet only after the unclanking of the nuts and bolts of the rusty licence raj was there hope to spread the message in a flattening world you didnt need to scream because the world had come into a huddle this suited india fine because the new methods of the market were more persuasive for it isnt in our blood to go about blustering and invadingsuddenly it seems we held all the aces cola ads sprung up on the walls of thatched huts in the boondocks our music literature dance art cuisine and sport appeared on international billboards bollywood has been going to london and rajnikanth has cast a spell on japanese viewers amid all this the it juggernaut rolled onclearly the binary vision of wealth creation and enhancement of new knowledge has earned india a global stature the staggering impact shows in mckinsey report projections which put it exports from india by the end of 2008 to 50 billion and