As India prepares to mark its 78th Independence Day, SBI General Insurance—a subsidiary of State Bank of India, the nation’s largest public sector undertaking—commissioned Sneha Khanwalkar to create something rather extraordinary. The result was “Sound Symphony,” a sonic reimagining of the national anthem that traced India’s journey from 1947 to the present through carefully curated sounds: the whistle of steam engines morphing into the chime of UPI notifications, the crackle of transistor radios giving way to smartphone alerts. On paper, it sounds ambitious, even inspired. In execution, it reveals something far more troubling about contemporary Indian advertising and our relationship with cultural heritage—particularly when a government-owned institution with 500 million customers appropriates the national anthem for commercial purposes.
The Doordarshan Echo
Watching SBI General’s latest offering, one cannot escape the uncanny sensation of déjà vu. There’s something distinctly reminiscent of those earnest patriotic campaigns that once graced Doordarshan in the late 1980s and early 1990s—Mile Sur Mera Tumhara (1988), celebrating linguistic diversity; Ek Chidiya Anek Chidiya, teaching unity; Hamara Bajaj, selling mobility with “Buland Bharat ki Buland Tasveer“; Nirma‘s “Doodh si safedi.” Those campaigns possessed authentic naïveté, reflecting rather than manufacturing cultural aspirations.
The difference is profound: those earlier campaigns became part of India’s cultural fabric because they emerged from genuine public service mandates. Today’s PSU marketing, however sophisticated, remains fundamentally extractive—mining cultural sentiment for commercial gain whilst exploiting the legitimacy of public ownership.
The Public Sector Paradox
What makes SBI General’s appropriation particularly troubling is its status as a subsidiary of India’s largest public sector bank. State Bank of India, with 57.51 percent government ownership, 500 million customers, and 23 percent market share, is owned by every Indian taxpayer.
When such an institution enlists the national anthem for subsidiary insurance marketing, it transforms from corporate overreach into institutional cultural colonisation.
This creates a unique paradox: a publicly-owned institution manufacturing patriotic sentiment to sell commercial products to the very citizens who, as taxpayers and depositors, already own the parent company.
The campaign represents not merely the commodification of cultural heritage, but the commodification of citizenship itself.
The Commodification Paradox
The decision to appropriate the national anthem as raw material for corporate messaging represents particularly aggressive cultural colonisation when executed by a PSU subsidiary.
Khanwalkar’s celebrated rough-edged idiom has been smoothed into corporate palatability—authentic regional sounds processed through government-owned corporate filters until they become safe for universal consumption.
For a PSU, the technological determinism underlying the campaign’s narrative arc carries additional weight, suggesting that public institutions view national development primarily through the lens of consumer evolution rather than genuine social progress.
The Sonic Branding Dilemma
When a government-owned bank’s subsidiary engages in sonic appropriation of the national anthem, it adds layers of institutional betrayal to commercial cynicism. Unlike commercial jingles, the anthem carries profound emotional weight precisely because it exists outside commerce.
To repurpose it for PSU brand building represents a fundamental category error—transforming collective heritage into a marketing asset managed by institutions entrusted with serving public interest.
The Authenticity Trap
SBI General exemplifies how PSU subsidiaries exploit their institutional legitimacy to blur lines between public service and commercial marketing.
By framing the exercise as a “tribute” whilst serving purely commercial agendas, they claim cultural authority using public resources and public trust—a positioning that carries particular audacity for government-owned entities.
The Independence Day Industrial Complex
For PSU subsidiaries like SBI General, participation in the annual patriotic advertising ritual creates unique contradictions. Unlike private companies contributing as corporate citizens, PSUs already serve public interest through their core mandate.
When they additionally compete for patriotic credibility through marketing campaigns, they risk converting public service into performative patriotism.
The Regulatory Vacuum
The campaign highlights the absence of clear frameworks governing PSU marketing practices regarding national symbols.
Unlike private companies facing various restrictions, PSU subsidiaries operate in a grey area where public ownership grants implicit cultural authority whilst commercial objectives drive aggressive marketing tactics—a regulatory gap that demands urgent attention.
Looking Forward: The Price of Progress
For PSUs, the stakes are particularly high. These institutions were created to serve public interest, not compete with private sector marketing sophistication. When they prioritise brand building over public service, they risk undermining the very legitimacy that justifies their continued existence in India’s mixed economy.
The sounds that built India deserve better than becoming ringtones for PSU subsidiary marketing. They deserve to remain expressions of a collective journey belonging to all Indians, not marketing assets available to government-owned commercial entities. In transforming them into brand content, campaigns like Sound Symphony don’t honour that journey—they diminish it whilst betraying the public trust that makes PSU operations possible.
For a nation still grappling with the proper role of state-owned enterprises in a market economy, the Sound Symphony campaign serves as a cautionary tale about what happens when public institutions lose sight of their primary mandate in pursuit of commercial success.