Brand India WHEN we look at Brand India, five characteristics come immediately to mind. I will focus on each of these very briefly. They often tend to get taken for granted.  First, Brand India is multilayered - by caste, by language, by religion, by region, by income, which is very important as far as consumer goods are concerned.  Second, Brand India is an evolved brand.  Third, it is an aggregative brand, one that is composed of a large number of sub-brands.  Fourth, it's a brand in transition. It's not a settled brand. It's undergoing transformation daily, in various attributes.  And finally, it's a brand which has its own unique psychology. When we talk about India as a multilayered brand, the first thing that comes to mind is that we are a land of incredible diversity. In fact, there is no other country in the world which has the type of diversity that we have, in various dimensions. There is an ethnic diversity; linguistic; religious; regional. It's a brand of incredible diversity, and marketers who have not understood this basic fact have quickly come to grief. This is a fact that often gets lost when you see Power Point presentations by McKinsey or Boston Consulting Group, on which multinationals depend to enter this country. And they find that India is not quite what is portrayed. Second, it's an evolving brand. Today, we are all very proud that we are the world's IT capital, a country to which all the big companies are coming to, whether it's in software, or auto components or in research. But 40 years ago, Brand India meant to mean the world's largest importer of wheat. Forty years ago, it meant to mean a `basket case' economy that depended on food imports. But in 40 years, that economy has become the world's second or third largest rice/wheat producer, largest milk producer. That's what I mean by saying it's an evolving