The Government must use all its vital agencies to allay fears from the public space. It should launch a war to prevent misinformation so as to continue the reforms
Out of the innumerable messages and jokes floating around demonetisation, this short one seems to address the inconvenience anxiety well: ‘A common man: I have no black money, why should I suffer in queue. Army man: I have no personal enemy in Pakistan, why should I take bullets for you’.Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that inconvenience is inevitable, given the nature of the intervention, in what is the hardest assault on corruption and the terror funding network. However, by magnifying this problem and clutching on to the ‘inconvenience to people' narrative like a stubborn child to her toy, a group of political actors may have exposed their vulnerability, and exasperation.
A friend quipped the other day, “The trinity of politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen which thrive on black money and are the hardest hit, and who also have considerable sway over opinion building, are naturally the most vociferous”. The battle for building narratives that followed was on expected lines. Suddenly, concern for people’s harassment and execution became glaring.
A known ‘crusader' of probity in public life, and whose meteoric rise in politics was owing to his championing the cause of corruption, issued a 50-hour warning to the Prime Minister for an impending law and order chaos. The hoot and shoot strategy has worked for such actros. The inconvenience and execution glitch narratives have taken precedence over how this historic and bold decision is set to benefit India and her tryst for a corruption-free society. The story of a carefully crafted strategy — from Jan Dhan to Amnesty Scheme to Demonetisation — has been lost in the cacophony created by desperate and intolerant actors.
In wake of this, the Government would do well to address two immediate challenges: logistics & perception management. While all agree that execution can be further made better, there is an equal need to step up efforts to augment and intensify narratives on how demonetisation is needed and it helps. This is an unprecedented move, and as rivals display abhorring political pettiness by opposing this, the Government would do well to launch an equally aggressive assault on curbing the spread of misinformation. The defense too should be as kadak as the scheme.
Here are five probable steps the Government can consider to achieve this imperative. First, for a week at least, all the Ministries of the Central Government can be made to issue advertisements in newspapers and TV channels educating people on the long-term benefits of demonetisation as well as basic information. The advertisements should be in all regional languages.
Two, Indian Railways carry about 22 million people every day, and about 100 million in a week. All its public announcement system including those in trains can be activated to disseminate appropriate information and counter misinformation; hoardings and banners can be put up at its 4000 stations; and all printed tickets can carry messages too.
Three, the Government should try to rope in its huge pool of human resources across ministries to help disseminate the message — there are 46 Central universities with thousands of teachers and staff and, they all can be requested to spend few hours in a day trying to help people negotiate the temporary challenge. Similarly, the Indian Council of Agriculture Research has 101 institutes and 71 agriculture universities with large human resources pool. It should be roped in to spread message using interpersonal communication and social media. Four, the Government should urge 249 private universities to contribute the cause of nation building by encouraging their staff and students to spend an-hour-a-day on Twitter and Facebook and help spread positive messages on demonetisation and its benefits.
last, but most significantly, the Prime Minister’s Office would do well to constitute a communications committee with the task of developing messages, monitoring narratives, building arguments against those, and ensuring dissemination using various platforms. Public service broadcaster — Prasar Bharti has a huge bandwidth — with 414 AIR broadcasting centers and 67 Doordarshan studios — of information outreach, and all its platforms can be designed for heightened awareness and education.
(The writer is a strategic communications professional)