India has a rich culture and tourism is our strength and our soft power, said Union Minister of State for Tourism and Civil Aviation Mahesh Sharma. Referring soft power as the ‘Mridul Shakti’, the Minister said, “We Indians have soft power hidden in the faces of our young generation which needs to be beautified and explored, and then only we can make our country a soft power at an international level,” Dr Sharma said.
Rajya Sabha member and Editor of The Pioneer Chandan Mitra delivered the keynote address on the seminar — India’s Soft Power: An Untapped Potential — organised by Maharaja Agrasen College in East Delhi on Thursday. “India’s culture and heritage is appreciated by all over the world. Our rich cultural heritage is still preserved in the South-East Asian countries and people there follow it.”
Even Bollywood films and songs have great influence on the people of the western countries, Mitra said, adding that this is the soft power which has connected India with other countries. “If India’s heritage, natural beauty and rapidly advanced information technology can be combined, India can be projected as culturally vibrant,” said Mitra, adding that it has made tremendous advances in science and technology. He appealed to the students to equip themselves with the knowledge of the India’s past and recent achievement to change of being a poor country with only hungry people, he further said. “It was very useful seminar as I got to know how people abroad look at us and what all efforts can be done to make our country better,” said Dilbahar, a second year political science student.