A K Bhattacharya: Mis-information officers

RAISINA HILL

A few weeks ago, the Madhya Pradesh government had issued an unusual order. It said that no secretary to the government of Madhya Pradesh would be required to be present at the state Cabinet meetings.

The secretaries would be made to sit in an adjacent room. If the Cabinet members present at the meeting require the services of a secretary, he or she would be summoned, the clarification obtained and then the officer would have to return to the adjacent room.

This was an unusual order because normally secretaries would also be seated in the same room where Cabinet meetings were held. Attendance of particularly those secretaries whose proposals were due to be taken up for consideration at a Cabinet meeting, was considered compulsory.

What then was the provocation of the new Madhya Pradesh government directive? Quite strangely, it was a "leak" to the media that provoked such an extreme step.

In one of the recent Cabinet meetings, there was a dispute over a proposal. While one minister supported the proposal, another minister opposed it.

This led to heated arguments. The following day, major newspapers in Bhopal carried reports of how ministers fought among themselves over the proposal.

An enraged chief minister was keen to know the source of the "leak" and wanted immediate steps to ensure that discussions at the Cabinet meetings remained confidential.

There were as many as 30 ministers who were present at the Cabinet meeting. But the chief minister and his advisors came to the conclusion that it must have been one of the bureaucrats who talked to the media about the deliberations at the Cabinet meeting. So, secretaries were barred from attending the Cabinet meetings.

Why secretaries alone were suspected of having "leaked" the deliberations at the Cabinet meeting, and not the ministers, is part of a larger problem that afflicts not just the Madhya Pradesh administration, but governments in many other states and at the Centre.

Ministers are often wary of the bureaucrats for talking to the media and sharing with it information that may be confidential or might inconvenience and embarrass the government. So, you have elaborate procedures laid down by the government at the Centre and in the states.

For instance, it is only the secretaries in most departments in states who are officially permitted to talk to members of the media. In most central ministries, only officials above the rank of a joint secretary are authorised to speak to media representatives.

Some union ministries have even stipulated that only the secretary will speak to members of the media. The central idea behind the entire approach is to reduce the scope of information sharing with the media.

But little attention is paid to the past experience of many governments that restricting information flow has often been counterproductive and has led to misinformation and negative publicity.

While the bureaucrats in Madhya Pradesh may have been upset by the manner in which the ministers in the state kept them out of the loop to avoid any information "leak", a similar feeling of neglect pervades another government department that was primarily created to share information with the media.

The Press Information Bureau (PIB) under the ministry of information and broadcasting is entrusted with the responsibility of disseminating information on developments taking place in the central ministries and sharing them with the media.

Similarly, the directorates of publicity in state governments undertake the same responsibility of collecting information from the ministers and bureaucrats with a view to sharing it with the media.

But if you talk to the officials in PIB and the directorates of publicity in the states, the scenario that emerges on information sharing is fairly depressing.

PIB officials often complain that senior officials in the central ministries are very reluctant to share information even with them. Very often the joint secretary or the additional secretary in the central ministry is unwilling to share with the PIB official information on the latest developments.

If he is not reluctant, then he causes as much delay as possible while sharing the information. Often, this unhelpful approach defeats the very purpose and the relevance of quick sharing of information with the media.

The real problem is the mindset that prevails in the government. The ministers do not always trust all their officials. The Madhya Pradesh government episode a few weeks ago was an example of this.

Worse, even the bureaucrats do not always trust their own colleagues entrusted with the task of sharing information with the media.

The net outcome of this mindset is that misinformation and selective "leaks" continue to take place. This creates a vicious cycle, because the government reacts with even greater curbs on information flow.

It is time to get out of the vicious cycle and set a transparent system of information dissemination, where ministers, bureaucrats, press information officials function with the sole purpose of increasing the general flow of information.