In other words, all sorts of communication devices are telling us the stories of countries, whether or not the countries concerned want people to hear those stories. So soft power is something that really emerges partly because of governments, but partly despite governments.ДЄnd in the information era, we all live in today, what we might call the TED age, I'd say that countries are increasingly being judged by a global public that's been fed on an incessant diet of Internet news, of televised images, of cellphone videos, of email gossip. But, the fact is, in fact, that probably Hollywood and MTV and McDonalds have done more for American soft power around the world than any specifical government activity. The Beijing Olympics were an exercise in Chinese soft power.ДЄmericans have the Voice of America and the Fulbright scholarships. He was writing initially about the States, but we know the Alliance Francaise is all about French soft power, the British Council. Soft power is a concept invented by a Harvard academic, Joseph Nye, a friend of mine.В And, very simply, and I'm really cutting it short because of the time limits here, it's essentially the ability of a country to attract others because of its culture, its political values, its foreign policies.ДЄnd, you know, lots of countries do this. But, somehow, none of that adds up to me, to what I think India really can aim to contribute in the world, in this part of the 21st century.ДЄnd so I wondered, could what the future beckons for India to be all about a combination of these things allied to something else, the power of example, the attraction of India's culture, what, in other words, people like to call 'soft power.' When the rest of the world took a beating last year, we grew at 6.7 per cent. Is it nuclear capacity? We know we have that.В The Americans have even recognized it, in an agreement.В Is it the economy? Well, we have now the fifth-largest economy in the world in purchasing power parity terms.ДЄnd we continue to grow. Is it military strength? Well, we have the world's fourth-largest army. It's redolent of James Bond movies and Kipling ballads.В After all, what constitutes a world leader? If it's population, we're on course to top the charts. In fact, the American publishers of my book, 'The Elephant, The Tiger and the Cell Phone,' added a gratuitous subtitle saying, 'India: The next 21st-century power.'ДЄnd I just don't think that's what India's all about, or should be all about.В Indeed, what worries me is the entire notion of world leadership seems to me terribly archaic. As an Indian, and now as a politician and a government minister, I've become rather concerned about the hype we're hearing about our own country, all this talk about India becoming a world leader, even the next superpower.

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