President of India: It may cost India 14,000 crores of rupees to become Bharat

 President of India: It may cost India 14,000 crores of rupees to become Bharat

According to estimates, changing India's name to Bharat may cost the nation more than Rs 14,000 crore, which is how much the Center already spends each month on its food security program.

It has come to light that President Droupadi Murmu sent official invitations for the G20 dinner under the moniker "President of Bharat" rather than the customary "President of India," as India prepares to host the G20 Summit 2023 in New Delhi later this week.

Unsurprisingly, the Opposition has expressed outrage over this, with Congress leader Jairam Ramesh even alleging that Article 1 of the Constitution is currently being attacked. India, also known as Bharat, is a "Union of States," according to Article 1 of the Indian Constitution.

Himanta Biswa Sharma, the chief minister of Assam and a prominent member of the BJP, posted shortly after, "REPUBLIC OF BHARAT - happy and proud that our civilisation is marching ahead boldly towards AMRIT KAAL." The President's new title might only be a precursor to more changes that could happen in the upcoming weeks. Many are left to speculate about how much it will cost the nation to formally change its name.

Resolution At a Special Session of the Parliament?

A proposal to officially rename India as Bharat is expected to be discussed during the upcoming special session of the Parliament, according to a number of reports. A special session of the Parliament will be held from September 18 to 22 as announced on August 31 by Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Pralhad Joshi.

Following an announcement from the Lok Sabha Secretariat that the extraordinary session would skip question period, zero hour, and private member's business, opposition parties expressed their displeasure.

It will also be perceived as a political jab at the Opposition parties who have united behind the term INDIA if the Centre moves forward with introducing a resolution to rename the nation Bharat. The opposition coalition, known as the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (I.N.D.I.A. ), is made up of 26 parties that plan to run together in the general elections of 2024.

The federal government is likely to follow forward with the renaming resolution shortly, thus it is important to consider the accompanying expenditures. Despite the fact that a number of cities and towns in India have recently had their names changed, changing a nation of more than 1.4 billion people will be expensive.

Indian cities' renamed

Renaming a nation or a province may appear to be a simple activity, but it entails adjustments at the hyperlocal, district, state, national, and international levels. This makes it a time-consuming and expensive process that calls for cooperation between numerous public and private agencies in addition to the mindset shift required of each citizen.

For a nation like India, which is not only the most populated in the world but also one of the most diverse, with a wide variety of cultures, languages, and ethnicities living within its physical borders, the difficulty of such an exercise will be multiplied.

Aurangabad, a city in Maharashtra, changed its name to Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar before this year. Osmanabad in Maharashtra was renamed Dharashiv at the same time.

The planned city of Gurgaon was renamed Gurugram by the state of Haryana in 2016. Similar to this, the Uttar Pradeshi city of Allahabad changed its name to Prayagraj in 2018. According to government estimates, the state government spent upwards of Rs 300 crore on the renaming of Allahabad, India Today previously reported, citing sources in the government's finance department.

Some of the costs would be associated with tasks like updating maps, navigation systems, highway landmarks, and other official supplies used in state and local government offices, among other things. These costs are in addition to those that private companies, corporate entities, and non-governmental organizations in the city or state that changes its name must pay.

Indian Renaming Cost To Bharat

India is not the only nation that has thought about changing its official name. These modifications have been seen all over the world for a variety of reasons, including enhancing administrative effectiveness, getting rid of colonial remnants, or indicating a shift in the type of administration.

Sri Lanka, India's southern neighbor, changed its name in 1972, but it took the island country nearly 40 years to stop using its previous name, "Ceylon," in any official capacities.

In an apparent effort to avoid any associations with colonialism, the monarch of Swaziland changed the name of the nation to Eswatini in 2018. Back then, a South African intellectual property attorney devised a formula to determine how much it would cost to rename a nation. To determine the approximate cost, Darren Olivier likened the name of the African country to a rebranding initiative at a major corporation.

According to Olivier, a large company's average marketing expense is roughly 6% of its overall sales. In turn, rebranding initiatives might cost up to 10% of the business's overall marketing budget. According to his calculations, changing Swaziland's name to Eswatini would cost $60 million.

Applying a similar methodology to India's situation will result in significant costs. India's total revenue for the fiscal year that concluded in 2023 was Rs 23.84 lakh crore, including both tax and non-tax revenue. In order to calculate the cost of Swaziland's renaming, Olivier's model took into account both revenue sources.

One can estimate the cost of renaming India to Bharat at Rs 14,304 crore by using the same technique with India's revenue. For comparison, the Center's food security program, which feeds 80 crore Indians, costs close to Rs 14,000 crore per month.

The approaching special session of Parliament will reveal whether the federal administration is serious about moving forward with the name-changing procedure. We currently know that foreign heads of state will join the president of India at the G20 official dinner.

In addition to other world leaders, US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Australian PM Anthony Albanese, Japanese PM Fumio Kishida, and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will attend the G20 Summit, which is set to take place September 9–10 at the Bharat Mandapam in Pragati Maidan, New Delhi.

Notably, Chinese Premier Li Qiang will take the place of Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 Summit.