The need for the government to improve its use of the media, both print and electronic, to handle national security concerns has clearly been spelt out by the Naresh Chandra Committee on National Security, which has submitted its final report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The 14-member task force, set up by the government a decade after the Kargil Review Committee to take forward national security reforms, has clearly added a new dimension to handling security challenges through the “media”. The urgency to focus on media relations gained critical importance after the 26/11 terror attacks. The task force says the ministries of home and defence need to reinvent their strategic communication wings by taking a leaf out of the PMO’s book.
It recommends that a “media-savvy bureaucrat” or a “senior media professional from the private sector” (as in the PMO), in the rank of additional secretary and reporting directly to the home and defence secretaries and to the ministers directly where required, should head the strategic communication wings in both ministries. It adds that the Press Information Bureau needs a “complete revamp” involving the attachment of information officers to “leading and respected media houses” for month-long training modules to bring them “up to date on the working professionalism and the psychology of the private media”.
The National Security Council Secretariat is currently conducting inter-ministerial consultations on the recommendations of the task force.