India's soft power has now enveloped Ghana via a Balaji tele-serial
For all the opprobrium heaped upon Ekta Kapoor and Balaji telefilms for the regressive value systems her serials allegedly promote, the opportunity she — rather her tele-serial Kumkum Bhagya — has opened for our foreign office mandarins to make inroads into the West African nation of Ghana is as full of potential as it is unexpected. On the evidence of the members of the Ghanaian national under-17 football team, in India to participate in the U-17 World Cup, the on-screen exploits of the characters of Kumkum Bhagya — Aliya, Pragya, Abhi, Tanu, Parab and Bulbul — have their country transfixed. So much so, that the moment the footballers learnt that their pre-quarter final match had been scheduled for Mumbai they started bombarding the producers with requests to visit the sets and meet the actors who most Ghanaians think can speak their local language (Twi) as the serial is dubbed.
This latest example of India's soft power outreach on a continent hitherto not exactly in thrall of mainstream Indian cinema/television outside of the South Asian communities settled there, is indicative of the power of the medium to help change perceptions. This is the same continent, remember, where only a few decades ago Idi Amin threw out Indians lock, stock and two smoking shops, as it were, and where even today the Indian community in the progressive “rainbow nation” of South Africa, for example, is seen as insular and ghettoised by many. And this, despite some leading lights of the African Nation Congress under Nelson Mandela having been of Indian origin. Of course, in the 1950s, the popularity bordering on hero-worship of Raj Kapoor and other cine stars in Soviet Russia was immense, but it was also a function of the Nehruvian state's close relationship with the USSR at various levels; and the Rajinikanth rage in Japan in the late 1990s/early 2000s came at a time when the context in which India and Indians were viewed was undergoing a transformation with economic liberalisation having had a decade or so to filter through and the advent of the IT industry and its Indian whizz-kids who aroused much interest in technology-obsessed Japan.
The runaway popularity of Kumkum Bhagya and its stars is more in the nature of an outlier hit as there has been no significant contextual framework in which it has succeeded, which is also why it is an opportunity for New Delhi to ride on the opening it provides to leverage engagement with Accra. China has already expanded its sphere of influence in Africa though the relationships it is building are more transactional in nature so India clearly has the soft power advantage. It may be noted, incidentally, that minerals comprise nearly 40 per cent Ghana's total exports — the country is Africa's largest gold producer with significant manganese and bauxite production too.