The widespread controversies surrounding the renaming of India as “Bharat” have not only sparked heated debates among politicians but also led experts to calculate the potential financial impact on the government’s coffers. According to a report by Outlook Business, an intellectual property attorney who prepared an estimated cost for changing a country’s name anticipates the expense to be approximately INR 14,304 crore.
South Africa’s Darren Oliver had used a similar formula in 2018 when Swaziland changed its name to Eswatini to separate from colonial remnants. He estimated that the cost of renaming an African country would be around 60 million dollars. He applied the same methodology using India’s revenue as a factor. According to Oliver, the average marketing budget for a large enterprise constitutes roughly 6% of its total revenue, while the cost of rebranding practices accounts for up to 10% of the company’s overall marketing budget.
For the financial year 2022-23, India’s revenue receipts, including tax and non-tax revenue, amounted to INR 23.84 lakh crore. According to Oliver’s formula, the cost of changing “India” to “Bharat” would be INR 14,304 crore (0.006 * 23.84 lakh crore).
As mentioned in the Outlook Business report, this amount is approximately equivalent to the monthly expenditure on the National Food Security Programme, which provides sustenance to around 80 crore Indians.
While it remains uncertain whether the central government intends to proceed with the name change proposal, foreign heads of state have been participating in G20 summit events alongside India’s President. As President Droupadi Murmu’s invitation for a G20 dinner referred to her as “President of Bharat,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi was also recognized as a representative of “Bharat” in his role at the G20 summit that began on September 9.