Speaking for itself

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has constituted a group of ministers as part of an exercise to better communicate his governments policies and actions to the public. The members all belong to the Congress party and the group will be chaired by Home Minister P. Chidambaram. They will meet every afternoon,so that a better and presumably current brief will be prepared as an aid for officials. More importantly,a member of the GoM will brief the media every day. This is the closest the UPA,in its first and now second government,has come to possessing a spokesperson. If this signals an end to the extraordinary reticence the UPA government imposed on itself,its a welcome development.

If a perception of drift has settled over the UPA government and the national security implications of that are discussed above its in large part because it has made no effort to stay on the message. It has failed not just to engage with the daily news cycle,but also to articulate real-time what the thinking and planning in the government is,and thereby shape political discourse. Instead,it has been left to Congress spokespersons to go into combat daily,an obviously inadequate substitute as the party and government cannot overlap completely in a single-party regime,let alone a coalition,and to ministers in their individual capacity. The arrangement,which has been of the UPAs own choosing,has handicapped it from taking credit where it has been due and also from fire-fighting its way out of controversy whether it be to provide clarity on the 2G investigations,or lower temperatures over the Telangana agitation. And given the UPAs unique party-government relations,this arrangement has also provided fodder for political speculation.

In any case,governments need to be articulate not just to feed the media cycle and to be better equipped to go into combat with television anchors. Regularly accounting for their plans and actions is a democratic transaction governments conduct with the people. It keeps them more transparent and accountable,and in turn it imposes on them more exacting standards for performance. A daily briefing is a good start.