ABSTRACT
In an effort to redesign its global image, India has been stepping up its initiatives to be recognized as a serious economic player and technological powerhouse. To accomplish this goal, the Indian state has begun to revise and institutionalize its relationship with its influential diaspora spread across the world. Since the economic liberalization of the nineties, a variety of initiatives undertaken by the Indian state have tapped the diaspora as potential investors. More recently, as the nation brands itself to secure a place in the global economy, its connections with the diaspora have assumed new inflections and publicity campaigns for the nation are strategically leveraging the diaspora’s cosmopolitan status. In this branding project, which is at the same time political, economic and cultural, globally positioned diasporic communities are recruited not only to be agents of national change but also to serve as conduits to circulate India’s image globally.
