He is a man who sold India as Incredible to the world. For bureaucrat Amitabh Kant the key word is can. From his days as the Chief Secretary, Tourism of Kerala where he branded the idyllic state as God’s Own country, Amitabh Kant has authored “Branding India – An Incredible Story” and has been a key driver of Make in India, Startup India, and Incredible India. He is the ultimate babu of branding
Kerala was no Kashmir, at least as far as tourism was concerned but then one man changed that profile by making Kerala God’s Own Country boosting its tourism profile around the world. It was in the late Nineties that an officer of the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) from the Kerala cadre along with many others put together a campaign that changed the mindset of a sluggish state to woo the world. Soon Kerala was to become the toast of the world and tourism took a huge upswing – the three magic words had raised Kerala from obscurity to global recognition as a tourist destination, capturing the imagination of millions. The bureaucrat in the middle of this success was a young man in his forties – Amitabh Kant. Along with Kerala, Kant’s fortunes also turned.
Next came the Incredible India. This branding of India put Kant on a different track altogether. Lifting the country’s tourism sector out of the doldrums after the September 11 attacks, Kant built a brand away from the stereotypes of snake charmers and touts lingering at tourist hotspots to better capture India’s new dynamism. Dubbed a “masterstroke of international branding” by the editor of the National Geographic Traveler, “Incredible India” soon became a household phrase.
But the challenge at the start of the campaign looked steep. For example, in a book on the campaign, Kant recalls travelling from Delhi to the Buddhist pilgrimage site Bodhgaya. “The national highway stretch was probably the worst in the world — the entire distance of 96 kilometres was full of large potholes. It has a bone-rattling nightmare — a journey that should have taken a-hour-and-a-half took us almost five hours. No wonder the Japanese and Southeast Asian tourists, who should have flocked to visit the Mecca of Buddhism, had been driven away,” he wrote.
The campaign meant changing some reluctant mindsets, including within India’s bureaucratic machine, about how to give India’s image a facelift. It also meant building infrastructure such as new roads and hotels, cleaning up tourist sites and educating India’s notorious rickshaw drivers on the virtues of realistic prices.
Nicknamed the branding man, project man or even AK-47 for his result-oriented style of operation, Kant has many supporters. More often than not, he’s described by former college-mates, friends, colleagues and journalists as a man driven to achieving results and translating ideas— whether his own or taken from others— into “tangible results”. He is always positive. Whatever the idea, proposal or project, he examines them with an open mind, according to those who know him.
The word ‘branding’ has become so synonymous with Kant that his critics tend to dismiss him as ‘all fluff and no stuff’. Ironically, they criticise Kant’s ability to work within the system irrespective of his political masters.
The Make In India lion made up of cogwheels is Kant’s most visible branding exercise in the Modi regime. Though it is too early to predict its impact vis-a-vis turning India into a manufacturing hub, it has been accompanied by a more liberal foreign direct investment regime—again piloted by Kant in his role as Secretary of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP). The campaign is showing results in defence manufacturing.
A non-Malayali well conversant with Malayalam, Kant grabbed national attention with the branding and promotion of Kerala as a ‘must see’ destination (God’s Own Country) and later followed it up with the branding of India (Incredible! India) as a desirable tourist destination. At that time, tourism was on the periphery. To the Left Front Communist government, it was a bourgeois thing and an embarrassment, but he was able to take it to a higher level
The word ‘branding’ has become so synonymous with Kant that his critics tend to dismiss him as ‘all fluff and no stuff’. Ironically, they criticise Kant’s ability to work within the system irrespective of his political masters. In fact, as one observer is quoted as saying, “winning friends and influencing people is an art at which Kant is well adept. The result is he is able to deliver without ruffling the feathers of his political bosses.”
And those who are part of Lutyen’s Delhi and keep track of Delhi’s power lanes closely are quick to point out that Amitabh Kant functions more like a corporate CEO than a bureaucrat in every sense of the term. You won’t find heaps of files with red tapes on his table. Not just that, Kant like a CEO in a corner room, decides the colours of his sofa set, and the kind of wall hangings, paintings and sculptures dotting his cabin.
By no yardstick is Kant a yes-man, but he knows which way the wind is blowing. The fact that he thought up policy under the UPA (Manmohan Singh) and NDA (Narendra Modi) shows what a smart bureaucrat can really achieve if he puts his mind to it.
Kant comes from a family of high achievers—his father Rajni Kant was an administrator and legal expert; mother Dr Sita Srivastava was principal of Delhi’s Maitreyi College and author of prose and poetry books. His brother is Ravi Kant, CEO of Tata Motors; and brother-in law A.N. Roy was former police commissioner of Mumbai. Kant is a card-carrying member of the St Stephen’s family and a postgraduate from JNU.
Family members describe the 1980 batch IAS officer as hyperactive and a workaholic who never takes holidays but makes time for activities like golf, and even penning a book, Branding India: An Incredible Story, in 2009. He is a dedicated public servant with a very private sector mindset and that’s what has enabled his great success with projects that have caught the fancy of people.
Kant reminisces a bit about his journey and talks about how he comes from a family of civil servants in a recent interview to a national magazine. "When I joined the service, the only intention was to work for the country. We were all motivated by the passion for serving the country.”
So what's next for Kant? Does politics tempt him? He is clear on that count and is categorical: “No, I have no intention of joining politics. At heart, I'm just not cut out for it. I'm a civil servant and I just want to be an agent of change.”
Many feel that part of this success is driven by a belief that the government should facilitate, not do business. This was evident from the start of his bureaucratic career, which he began as an assistant collector attached to the Kerala land revenue department. Among his achievements was the introduction of fibreglass crafts and outboard motors, as also the launch of beach-level auctions of fish as managing director of Matsyafed. In the process, he was able to transform the lot of fishermen by enhancing their incomes. Kant lists it as his “most challenging and satisfying” assignment.
Unsurprisingly, most people who have been closely associated with Kant or have interacted with him note his ‘shrewdness’ and ability to communicate. It helps that many of the government’s focus areas— like sanitation and employment generation—has been tried out by Kant in other guises, like his rural tourism boost under a UNDP project or the Atithi Devo Bhava campaign to promote a clean environment and friendly behaviour by taxi drivers.
Kant was appointed CEO of Niti Aayog earlier this year, in January. The Prime Minister hand-picked him for the job.
Kant, after all, had a 38-year run in the Indian Administrative Service, India's elite bureaucratic corps, where he built a reputation for innovative thinking and a knack for building durable brands. Starting from the God's own Country campaign that transformed Kerala's tourism fortunes, to the memorable Incredible India campaign, to now Startup India and Make In India, seen everywhere from the New York subway to West Asian airports and European trade fairs—Kant's savvy has driven them all.
Under Make In India, Kant identified 25 departments for reform and their secretaries worked on an action plan and were monitored. There is a tremendous amount of work going on behind the scenes and it is yielding results. Besides, now the government is no longer announcing new schemes—it's going to be all about execution.
But Kant is not about all work and no play. "I believe in a work-life balance kind of a thing," Kant is known to repeat. His typical work-day—he's in office by 9 am and rarely leaves before 8 pm. And that's six days a week. "Not working on Saturdays is impossible."
Kant, 61, now occupies a special place in the Indian establishment. As the country attempts to shake off its socialist hangover and doubles down on the trajectory of rapid economic growth of the post-liberalisation years, he has emerged as something of a Sherpa. If Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the messiah of the 10 per cent GDP growth mantra, Kant is a favoured high priest, spreading the gospel from Mumbai to Davos via Hannover, creating campaigns and buzzwords that believers lap up and even the sceptics admire grudgingly.
Obviously, Kant is able to keep pace with the demands of the day, especially the present one which is clearly driven by quick sound bites and campaign lines and also shifts quickly from one stagemanaged event to another. FDI, smart cities, bullet trains, Digital India, Startup India…. the meeting points are too many. Clearly, the two – Modi and Kant – are a marriage made in heaven.