Transforming Government Communication: Anurag Thakur Can Begin With Plucking The Low-Hanging Fruits

Communication should be prompt, proofread and easy to understand. This was one of the tweet replies from Anurag Thakur, then a Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs, to the official handle of the Goods and Service Tax Network. Almost a year later, Thakur will now head the Information and Broadcasting Ministry (MIB), apart from the additional portfolio of Youth Affairs and Sports.

Thakur, renowned for his conviction and clarity of thought, has an elaborate resume. Four times Minister of Parliament, a short stint as the President of the Board for Cricket Control in India (BCCI), and working as the Minister of State for Finance, Thakur has been sailing on the ocean of politics for more than a decade now. This is where his expertise as a communicator and his experience as both a youth icon and a seasoned politician will come into play.

As evident by the communication around the Citizenship Amendment Act and the recent Farm Laws, there is a strong convergence between the communication from the government and the party headquarters. While communication is more structured, measured, and organised when it comes from any ministry, the issues being debated and discussed, in the end, are the same.

This is where Thakur will find his first problem, that of inheriting a weak legacy when it comes to the government communicating their intent and ideas around policymaking.

The politics of recent months, plagued by the farmer and labour protests, pandemic spread, vaccine hesitancy and rollout, and vaccine centralisation have exposed the chink in the communication armour of the government. The right ideas have not met the right voice, and often, the voice has not been strong enough.

Even for the most loyal supporters of the party and this government, the communication has been a disappointment. In the last two years, the television media has added to the chaos with its manipulation and misinterpretations, further adding to the communication woes of the government. There have been occasional successes, like the recent one where Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced vaccine centralisation, but those have been far too few and scattered.

For Thakur, there is a silver lining in this weak inheritance - the freedom to reform government communication and to up the ante when it comes to countering the misplaced and misinformed rhetoric of the opposition. As the Minister for Information and Broadcasting, of all the responsibilities on him, reforming government communication would be the most important one.

The second most important task would be to set up guidelines and procedures for media outlets propagating fake news, but that comes later.

Here are some low hanging fruits to begin with.

The communication from the government needs a routine face, and it cannot only be the literature published each day by the Press Information Bureau (PIB), even with all its efficiency and elaborateness. While there is little doubt about the quality of the facts and information posted by the PIB, the format and reach are not suited to cater to 600 million internet users and perhaps, a billion internet users by 2024.

To give an example, one of the most important press releases under the National Digital Health Mission from 27 May 2021, elaborating on the UPI e-vouchers intended for the targeting and delivery of many government services, starting with healthcare, had a visitor count of only 105 until today (8 July). The app and website, both can do with a bit of tinkering as well.

While comparisons of the PIB with the media outlets would be unfair, by virtue of traffic, almost all print and digital portals beat the PIB by a huge margin. For instance, for the last recorded month, the traffic numbers of PIB stood at a mere 2 million. Most media outlets register traffic numbers between 2x to 50x that of PIB numbers. Simply put, PIB cannot be the nucleus of government communication.

The government today, under the MIB, needs a press secretary. The position must be modelled on the lines of the White House Press Secretary. The secretary in question would be required to head a team of spokespersons across India to ensure linguistic access and would have to be a regular feature on government channels and other social media platforms. The government needs to re-establish its monopoly on communication.

It helps to have a face, one that can take questions, answer them with not facts and arguments alone, but with measured humour and wit. A core correspondents group would be the norm, covering the briefings held by the press secretary. Ideally, there should be two briefings on any normal day, morning and late evening, and as per the situation on days of any big news. With a face on the communication, it becomes easy for people to resonate with and remember.

Two, the content needs to formatted for social media. At the risk of sounding ambitious, the streaming of press briefings each day on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube must be complemented with images and videos that contain snippets on the issues of the day.

On matters of policy, the MIB should not feel small taking a cue from numerous media outlets. Cliched graphics must be replaced by intelligent infographics. Already, there is an effort underway by the PIB, but it needs to be further enhanced to sync it with the viral content on social media. How one wishes for witty answers from the press secretary to be released as Instagram reels and Twitter stories!

Thakur’s first fix must be to ensure that government communication is not always responsive or reactionary, as it has been in the last few months. With new policies and reforms, the literature must already be in place, advocated by spokespersons from Delhi and across states, led by the press secretary from the top.

Thakur, in his new appointment, has a golden opportunity to usher in a new age of government communication. Strengthening internet access across villages along with urban centres offers him an incentive to invest in new communication ideas that can keep up with the pace of social media.

It would be comparing apples and grapes, but Thakur is known for doing the unthinkable and impossible, as the people of Dharamshala saw with the cricket stadium becoming an official ICC Test Venue. In his new appointment, can Thakur set a new precedent, the right precedent, for government communication? Perhaps, the party then could draw a few much-needed lessons from the experiments and innovations at MIB.

One hopes.