Yoga guru’s positioning powers

Last month, the media reported that a batch of the amla juice produced by Patanjali Ayurved Ltd was tested at the Central Food Lab in Kolkata and had been declared “unfit for consumption”. Patanjali got back saying that the test had followed the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) standards while its amla juice was a “medicinal product” and thus came under the ambit of the Ministry of AYUSH.

For two years now, the FSSAI has insisted the “Baba” Ramdev-promoted fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company hasn’t sought its approval on various food items, including instant noodles. But that hasn’t prevented the company from launching a slew of products, including more and more medicinal products, finger foods and now apparel. It is this brazenness that has come to define the Ramdev brand, which seems to be present in every conceivable product category and every media vehicle. The sharp rise of the Haryana boy, first as an ondemand yoga guru and now as the biggest disruptor in the Indian FMCG market has been chronicled in great detail in The Baba Ramdev Phenomenon—From Moksha to Market by India Today journalist Kaushik Deka.

So far so good. Just don’t look for serious insights on branding or spirituality in this book. Not that it makes any pretension to being a literary work or a large scholarly project. Two sets of endorsements on the front and back covers — that Patanjali is “India’s Buzziest brand”, according to afaqs.com, and that it is “the most disruptive force in the Indian FMCG market”, according to a Assocham-TechSci research report—make the book look more like an apologia rather than a critical inquiry.

I would even excuse you if you thought the narrator was a victim of some sort of Stockholm Syndrome — he has spent so much time with his subject and his subject had been so warm, open, funny, friendly and so on that his work is no longer disinterested observation and reportage. Indeed, it reads almost like a defence of the subject’s brand of marketing and spirituality and how each has fed off the other.

While there are no nuggets of wisdom, there’s a lot on the life and lifestyle of the guy you first saw package and hard-sell instant yoga and now instant noodles on television. The book starts from the early days of Mr Ramdev’s life — where he was born, his school and early education — and then talks about how he cut his teeth as a yoga instructor on call, the mysterious disappearance of his guru moving to how Mr Ramdev and his friend from Nepal, Balkrishna, went on to build that $769-million empire brick by brick. In fact, for its 184 pages, the book covers quite a bit and the really interesting parts are towards the end — about Mr Ramdev’s political leanings and his advertising and social media prowess.

The two sections that stand out in the otherwise unimaginative narrative are “Power and Politics” and “Bend it Like Baba”. The highlight (mind you, this section is highlighted by a grey screen) is a section on Mr Ramdev’s “Web of Influence”. Of course, you know the names — from Narendra Modi, Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh to Pawan Munjal, Lakshmi Mittal and Anil Agarwal — but Mr Deka adds value by putting together in one place the list of people who made Mr Ramdev the phenomenon that he is today and decode the extent of their influence.

Also interesting in Mr Deka’s analysis of Mr Ramdev’s political predilections, which does a good job of unravelling how he has played his cards to his advantage — applauding the government when it suited him and lambasting it when things didn’t turn out in his favour. Remember how in November 2016, in the early days of demonetisation, Mr Ramdev was quick to appropriate credit (“I had planted the seeds of demonetisation. I continued the movement from 2009 to 2014 and asked the government to withdraw ~500 and ~1,000 currency notes as it was the root cause of corruption, black money generation and terror and militant funding.”), and then just stopped short of declaring that demonetisation had failed to achieve its goal. (“RBI officials have themselves engaged in corrupt practices since demonetisation”.)

All said, the issue is this: The Baba Ramdev Phenomenon… is a book and not a 500- or even a 5,000-word article. So just cramming in a lot of information won’t cut it. The elements that bind the pages and chapters and characters in a book — context, comment, criticism and debate — all of that is important and sorely missed. Also, since Bandeep Singh was present with Mr Deka for some of the interview, why weren’t more of his original, never-seen-before pictures used in the book? What is the exact contribution of the reclusive younger brother Ram Bharat to Patanjali?

THE BABA RAMDEV PHENOMENON

From Moksha to Market Kaushik Deka Rupa 184 pages; ~295