When India honours creativity as national infrastructure

This Republic Day, India’s honours quietly widened their lens. Creatives like Piyush Pandey were recognised alongside artists, musicians, and cultural practitioners whose work shaped how India speaks to itself. These were not awards for spectacle, but for influence built patiently through language, emotion, and everyday cultural memory. What’s being acknowledged is not just individual excellence, but the systems creatives help sustain. Advertising, music, cinema, and craft are part of India’s narrative infrastructure. They shape trust, aspiration, and collective identity at scale. In recognising this labour, the Republic signals that design and creativity are no longer peripheral to nation-building. They are central to how a country imagines itself, communicates with its citizens, and projects soft power to the world.

They are central to how a country imagines itself, communicates with its citizens, and projects soft power to the world.