Soft Power: India’s Greatest Asset

[bpagrawal]

The term Soft Power was first coined by Harvard University professor, Joseph Nye to describe a country’s ability to alter the behaviour of others through attraction rather than sticks or carrots.Everyone is familiar with hard power; the term soft power is quite a rage today. Its usefulness as a descriptive theory has been challenged often, but soft power is still being used as a term that distinguishes the subtle effects of culture, values, and ideas on others’ behavior from more direct coercive measures called hard power such as military action or economic incentives.

To understand the concept of Soft Power let us understand the underlying principle behind “Power”. The basic concept of power is the ability to influence others to get them to do what you want. There are three major ways to do that: one is to threaten them with sticks; the second is to pay them with carrots; the third is to attract them or co-opt them, so that they want what you want. If you can get others to be attracted to want what you want, it costs you much less in carrots and sticks.

http://www.lawweb.in/2012/08/soft-power-indias-greatest-asset.html

[vsaiyar]

The author should know the theary propounded in ages before i.e. SAMA, DANA, BHEDA AND DANDA.  The first method is Sama - ie. talk nicely and enrol the person to your views.  If does not work for whatever reason, it is advocated to offer a carrot.  i.e. Dana.  If it does not work then the third method is BHJEDA i.e. comparison so that a competitive spirit could be generated.  If all the three methods fail, then it is advised to take the last method i.e. DANDA i.e. punishment.  In India we never advocated Punishment as the first resort