This question has been bothering me for a while and especially over the past several weeks in the latest series of unseemingly tiffs between the Army HQ and the Ministry. Retired officers of all hues and shapes have been appearing regularly on national television and spouting their personal opinions as if it were representative of the majority in service, as well as those who have retired and moved on to other fields.
The moot question is:
Should retired Army officers be speaking with the media at all?
At first thought, the answer is a definitive NO! After all, you are retired and have, hopefully, moved on with life. The services command strong loyalties, due to its brand image, its elitist exclusivity and the many experiences it affords to officers. So letting go is difficult. But that should be viewed as the challenge, not the excuse for clinging on as a devoted evangelist.
Besides, the Army too would have moved on from the time you left it. Those of us who have been out of service for a while, we may not be able to even fathom the degree of change that has occurred even in such fundamentals as priorities, values and culture of the services. It only smacks you in the face when you are confronted with the frivolous level of conversations at annual regimental get-togethers and station social events to which you are invited, not necessarily because your association is cherished, but because it is the done thing.
However, getting back to the question of addressing the media, a roaring national debate may be the best outcome of the events of the recent past. At the present stage of human evolution, with the existance of nation states as our current reality, military security is an essential component of national security and a national debate on it can only be for greater good, especially in a democracy where elected representatives of the people constitute the state. If they are not educated, how will they acquire the knowledge and leadership abilities needed to understand the form and function and to be able to direct their armies within the context of a nation state? It is definitely not something that you can pick up overnight or even in the short five-year cycle of elected government. Of course, there are specialists who can advise, but in the Indian context, they have so far, been kept at arms length and outside of the government as attached offices, like in the colonial days. So who advises the government on matters of military security? The career bureaucrat, of course, and god bless India!
The fundamental challenge lies in educating, with all due respect, a miserably uninformed populace. People in general, have no interest beyond the perfunctory and no clue about what the military it is all about. For most, it is a subculture as alien as an extra-terrestrial. Many of the better informed consider it no greater than a glorified form of "chowkidari at the border". And I am perpetually amazed as to the large number of officers, who after spending many decades in service, have little concept of the role of the services other than "guarding the border". When questioned, it is the most common refrain. And these are the very people who appear as representatives and experts on defence matters. They have lost the plot even before they first open their mouth on television to confirm it in front of a national audience.
Not that the audience notice it, provided you look the part or "fit the mental image" of their conception of the archetypical "fauji". If he looks the part, he must be the real thing! And it doesn't matter what you say, because more than 90% of the time, you speak in a strange alien tongue, using a vocabulary which only some very hardened veterans can comprehend.
Consider this: How often, in all the courses you attended while in service, did you discuss national security and its implications, or for that matter, issues relating to higher defence organization or military security policy or civil-military relations? Or even, organization of the Defence HQ or the MoD and its charter? Or defence budgeting and capital acquisitions for that matter?
Speaking to the media is a highly specialised skill that the services are yet to develop - and it is called Perception Management. Most of the media briefings, say even at old public institutions such the US White House, is done by a qualified and nominated spokesperson. All formation headquarters have some semblance of this function, at least in form. Yet, they are rarely utilized, appearing more in the exception rather than the norm, that too when the army is pushed against a wall to explain some public incident. Even formation commanders can, while attempting to make a statement, inadvertantly put it across in a form which, while appropriate within the military context, is ambigious and open to interpretation by the media and results almost invariably in a raging controversy. We have seen enough instances of it in the recent past. Media is ubiqitous and managing it is a threshold competency in the 21st century.
The media tends to assumes that once you have accepted the invitation to appear on a scheduled program, you are knowledgeable about everything there is to know about the services, and many of us get drawn into a discussion on matters concerning, for example, say a sister service, and make statements without an ounce of knowledge about such matters. The escape option of apologizing and stating that the question was "outside your domain of expertise" is there for the taking, but rarely adopted! Attempting to answer it, no matter what, is a typical untrained and amateur response.
Media programs are also presented in different formats, with each having its own set of rules that have to be understood. There are "rules of engagement" that are different for each of these formats. A statement that appears reasonable in one format, may appear ludicrous in another. If you are not prepared, you can easily be provoked into saying something ill-conceived, without understanding all of its potentially controversial ramifications. But rest assured, it will come back to bite you when you least expect it, and usually at another time, and in another context.
That is part of their brief - to catch you off-guard and reveal something that can then be twisted into a sensation, that in turn will generate more sound bytes and yet more sensation and controversy! One of the first things you get to learn about the media is that it is a double-edged weapon and can cut both ways in the hands of an amateur spokesperson.
So given the complex nature of perception management and opinion making in the national context, how many of us have the necessary expertise to comment? Besides, vocabulary and parlance matter a great deal. Especially in a panel discussion where the audience can make a comparative assessment of the constituent members. Many a time, the service representative comes away appearing like a rare and antiquated fossil from a prehistoric era, much to the distress and detriment of the entire community of veterans and serving officers.
Bottomline - if you have to yak, please do some general reading up on the relevant subjects. Find out the agenda, the bias of the anchor, the background of fellow panelists and potential outcomes in terms of takeaways for the audience. Reflect on the subject matter, write about it, blog it and then, when the occasion arrives, speak in a parlance the general audience understands. There has to be a consistency, at least about the fundamentals. Samuel P Huntington's treatise "The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations" is a good starting point, especially in the context of recent events here in India.
The moot question is:
Should retired Army officers be speaking with the media at all?
At first thought, the answer is a definitive NO! After all, you are retired and have, hopefully, moved on with life. The services command strong loyalties, due to its brand image, its elitist exclusivity and the many experiences it affords to officers. So letting go is difficult. But that should be viewed as the challenge, not the excuse for clinging on as a devoted evangelist.
Besides, the Army too would have moved on from the time you left it. Those of us who have been out of service for a while, we may not be able to even fathom the degree of change that has occurred even in such fundamentals as priorities, values and culture of the services. It only smacks you in the face when you are confronted with the frivolous level of conversations at annual regimental get-togethers and station social events to which you are invited, not necessarily because your association is cherished, but because it is the done thing.
However, getting back to the question of addressing the media, a roaring national debate may be the best outcome of the events of the recent past. At the present stage of human evolution, with the existance of nation states as our current reality, military security is an essential component of national security and a national debate on it can only be for greater good, especially in a democracy where elected representatives of the people constitute the state. If they are not educated, how will they acquire the knowledge and leadership abilities needed to understand the form and function and to be able to direct their armies within the context of a nation state? It is definitely not something that you can pick up overnight or even in the short five-year cycle of elected government. Of course, there are specialists who can advise, but in the Indian context, they have so far, been kept at arms length and outside of the government as attached offices, like in the colonial days. So who advises the government on matters of military security? The career bureaucrat, of course, and god bless India!
The fundamental challenge lies in educating, with all due respect, a miserably uninformed populace. People in general, have no interest beyond the perfunctory and no clue about what the military it is all about. For most, it is a subculture as alien as an extra-terrestrial. Many of the better informed consider it no greater than a glorified form of "chowkidari at the border". And I am perpetually amazed as to the large number of officers, who after spending many decades in service, have little concept of the role of the services other than "guarding the border". When questioned, it is the most common refrain. And these are the very people who appear as representatives and experts on defence matters. They have lost the plot even before they first open their mouth on television to confirm it in front of a national audience.
Not that the audience notice it, provided you look the part or "fit the mental image" of their conception of the archetypical "fauji". If he looks the part, he must be the real thing! And it doesn't matter what you say, because more than 90% of the time, you speak in a strange alien tongue, using a vocabulary which only some very hardened veterans can comprehend.
Consider this: How often, in all the courses you attended while in service, did you discuss national security and its implications, or for that matter, issues relating to higher defence organization or military security policy or civil-military relations? Or even, organization of the Defence HQ or the MoD and its charter? Or defence budgeting and capital acquisitions for that matter?
Speaking to the media is a highly specialised skill that the services are yet to develop - and it is called Perception Management. Most of the media briefings, say even at old public institutions such the US White House, is done by a qualified and nominated spokesperson. All formation headquarters have some semblance of this function, at least in form. Yet, they are rarely utilized, appearing more in the exception rather than the norm, that too when the army is pushed against a wall to explain some public incident. Even formation commanders can, while attempting to make a statement, inadvertantly put it across in a form which, while appropriate within the military context, is ambigious and open to interpretation by the media and results almost invariably in a raging controversy. We have seen enough instances of it in the recent past. Media is ubiqitous and managing it is a threshold competency in the 21st century.
The media tends to assumes that once you have accepted the invitation to appear on a scheduled program, you are knowledgeable about everything there is to know about the services, and many of us get drawn into a discussion on matters concerning, for example, say a sister service, and make statements without an ounce of knowledge about such matters. The escape option of apologizing and stating that the question was "outside your domain of expertise" is there for the taking, but rarely adopted! Attempting to answer it, no matter what, is a typical untrained and amateur response.
Media programs are also presented in different formats, with each having its own set of rules that have to be understood. There are "rules of engagement" that are different for each of these formats. A statement that appears reasonable in one format, may appear ludicrous in another. If you are not prepared, you can easily be provoked into saying something ill-conceived, without understanding all of its potentially controversial ramifications. But rest assured, it will come back to bite you when you least expect it, and usually at another time, and in another context.
That is part of their brief - to catch you off-guard and reveal something that can then be twisted into a sensation, that in turn will generate more sound bytes and yet more sensation and controversy! One of the first things you get to learn about the media is that it is a double-edged weapon and can cut both ways in the hands of an amateur spokesperson.
So given the complex nature of perception management and opinion making in the national context, how many of us have the necessary expertise to comment? Besides, vocabulary and parlance matter a great deal. Especially in a panel discussion where the audience can make a comparative assessment of the constituent members. Many a time, the service representative comes away appearing like a rare and antiquated fossil from a prehistoric era, much to the distress and detriment of the entire community of veterans and serving officers.
 |
| A typical panel discussion |
Bottomline - if you have to yak, please do some general reading up on the relevant subjects. Find out the agenda, the bias of the anchor, the background of fellow panelists and potential outcomes in terms of takeaways for the audience. Reflect on the subject matter, write about it, blog it and then, when the occasion arrives, speak in a parlance the general audience understands. There has to be a consistency, at least about the fundamentals. Samuel P Huntington's treatise "The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations" is a good starting point, especially in the context of recent events here in India.
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