Beyond Bilateral Economic Equations: Putting Culture at the Heart of Diplomacy
Cultural diplomacy supports trade by building familiarity and trust before negotiations begin. Language classes, cinema, food, scholarships, tourism and the arts create people who understand a country and want to work with it. Culture cannot fix bad policy or close a deal on its own. It prepares the ground so diplomacy and business meet less resistance.
By Saurabh Vig
Trade and investment are about interests, of course. But more than that, they are about trust. When a company decides where to invest, it looks at returns, rules and the size of the market. But when that country feels familiar and friendly, that decision actually becomes much easier to take.
The American scholar Joseph Nye called this soft power, that means the ability to attract rather than to force. And this is exactly why countries have gone ahead and built institutions like the Goethe-Institut, Alliance Française, British Council and the Japan Foundation. All of them work on one simple idea: if people understand and respect your country, they will be more open to doing business with you.
Now, culture does not replace formal diplomacy. It supports it. Official relations go up and down with politics and elections, but cultural ties move slowly and they last. And very often, they are the ones that keep a relationship warm when governments are not talking much.
How countries actually do it
If you spend one week in Delhi, you will see cultural diplomacy happening all around you, because almost every embassy here runs some kind of cultural programme.
Language. This is the deepest way into another country. Somebody who spends two years learning Japanese or French very often ends up looking for work, partners or friends connected to that particular country. So a language class is actually the beginning of a lifelong link.
Cinema and popular culture. South Korea is the best example of our time. K-dramas and K-pop built a huge following across the world, and that following then wanted Korean food, Korean cosmetics, Korean fashion and holidays in Korea. And the reason it worked is that nobody ever felt they were being sold something.
Food. A restaurant makes a country a part of somebody’s daily life. Thailand has worked for years to take Thai restaurants abroad, and today Thai food is both good publicity and good business for them.
Education. Scholarships like Fulbright, Chevening, Erasmus and Japan’s MEXT create networks that outlive any government. These students go on to become business leaders, politicians, journalists and professors, and they carry a first-hand understanding of the country that hosted them.
Tourism. Every visitor goes home with stories. A good first trip leads to a second trip, then a business visit, and sometimes, an investment.
Music and the arts. This week itself, I am going to be at a recital of Spanish piano music by Andreas König at Akshara Theatre, organised by the Embassy of Spain as part of the Spain–India Dual Year 2026. And later this month, the Estonian Embassy is hosting the folk duo Puuluup. Events like these put artists and audiences in the same room, and that is where real connections actually begin.
India has so much to offer, and still more to do
India has one of the richest cultural traditions in the world, and we have been building institutions around it for decades. The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), set up in 1950, runs Indian cultural centres abroad, supports chairs of Indian studies and gives scholarships to foreign students. The Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme, running since 1964, has trained thousands of professionals from across the Global South, and many of them remain friends of India for life.
More than that, some of our strongest soft power has nothing to do with the government at all. Bollywood has loyal fans from Central Asia to Africa to Russia. Indian food is there in every city from London to Nairobi. And International Day of Yoga, which the United Nations adopted in 2014 after India proposed it, has turned an Indian tradition into a global celebration every year.
Our civilisational links also open doors for us. Shared Buddhist heritage connects India naturally with Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand and much of East and Southeast Asia, which supports our Act East policy. And our diaspora, one of the largest in the world, adds a people-to-people connection that very few countries can match.
But I personally believe India can go ahead and do much more. We are very good at showcasing our culture. The next step is building lasting relationships through it, and that means teaching Indian languages abroad, more two-way scholarships and research exchanges, translating our regional literature and cinema, and giving steady funding to our cultural centres. That is how admiration actually turns into long-term partnership.
From goodwill to business
The road from culture to commerce is not a straight one, but it is very real. When people feel they know a country, dealing with it seems less risky. Culture creates customers for that country’s products, it creates professionals who understand both sides, and it creates goodwill when negotiations become difficult. And it helps governments back home as well. It is much easier to defend a trade deal when your own citizens feel they know the partner country.
Showing off is not enough
Many countries treat cultural diplomacy as image building, that means put your best face forward and wait for the applause. That gets you attention for some time, and then nothing. In my experience, three things make the real difference.
The first is give and take. The best cultural diplomacy works both ways. A country that only promotes itself, without listening, hosting or working together, ends up sounding like an advertisement.
The second is honesty. People very quickly notice when a country’s story does not match its actions, and cultural programmes that feel like propaganda end up doing more harm than good.
The third is staying in touch. Trust comes from meeting again and again: teacher exchanges, alumni networks, festivals that come back every year, sister-city links and diaspora communities. One festival creates a moment. Ten years of steady engagement creates real friends.
What this means for governments and businesses
Governments should invest in relationships and not in one-off campaigns, and they should measure success over years, in learners, alumni and partnerships, and not in social media numbers.
For businesses, understanding culture is a very practical advantage. A company entering a new market benefits from the goodwill that cultural exchange has already built, and it can go ahead and add to it through sponsorships, internships and local partnerships.
Culture cannot fix bad policy, and it will not close a deal on its own. What it does is prepare the ground, so that diplomacy and business meet with less resistance and more patience.
Author’s Note
For years, Economic Diplomacy has covered FTAs, investment summits and ministerial visits. With this first piece on Cultural Diplomacy. we argue that friendships between people deserve as much attention as deals between governments.
The relationships that work are never built in the negotiation room alone. Long before officials sit across the table, people in both countries already know something of each other. They have watched each other’s films, eaten each other’s food, learnt each other’s language, or have a friend or cousin who studied there. That familiarity is why the conversation becomes easier when it finally begins.
That is the space culturaldiplomacy.in (a subset of economicdiplomacy.in for the best web pages being developed) will cover: the concerts, exhibitions, festivals, film weeks and conversations that happen every week in Delhi and across India, and what they mean for the larger relationships between countries. Culture and economics are not two subjects. They are two sides of the same story.
Economic Diplomacy will keep covering the deals. We will cover the friendships that make those deals possible. If your embassy or cultural centre has an upcoming event, write to us. We would love to be there.
Editor of CulturalDiplomacy.in and a culture specialist at EconomicDiplomacy.in
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