Kishan S Rana: Public diplomacy and India

Over the past 6 or 8 months, a couple of government initiatives "" the 'India Shining' campaign, and the harnessing of cricket diplomacy to reach out to Indian and Pakistani public, and to partly reshape mutual perceptions "" have produced an outpouring of printer's ink and electronic chatter.

Of course the political calculus behind the moves has been self-serving; that is what politics is about. The only surprise left now is the denouement that the Indian voters will serve up in mid-May, when the national election votes are tallied. And yet, we have overlooked one aspect of these actions, that they represent an application of some cutting edge public governance concepts.

One buzzword currently prominent in international affairs is 'public diplomacy'. In the period 2001-03, the US has seen eightmajor task forces of its prolific international affairs and thinktank community producing reports on this theme, urging change in the way this superpower projects its policy abroad.

After 9/11, one consequence has been that in foreign policy, debate over re-examination of marketing has dominated fundamental review of that policy. Washington DC agonises: why does the world not love the US as much as its self-image merits?

This has produced new fascination with public diplomacy (PD). Is the concept a US invention? What exactly does it mean? The term has several layers of meaning, each relevant but incomplete in itself.

First, PD is a presented as a counterpoint to secret diplomacy, somewhat comparable to open diplomacy (the French call it diplomatie ouverte). Second, some cynics view PD as a sophisticated name for foreign affairs propaganda by governments.

This is often true, but such a description is incomplete. Third, some call PD an effort by governments to influence both foreign and domestic public. Since strictly speaking 'diplomacy' is an external activity, the effort to win over domestic public might be better described as 'public relations'.

However, since the methods used in both are almost identical, a single term is convenient. A final elaboration factors into it the activities undertaken by non-state actors, ranging from the media to cultural and educational institutions and others, either acting in consonance with governments, or on their own.

Thus, we can define PD activity as the state or non-state agencies acting to influence the foreign and/or domestic public on matters relating to foreign affairs or the image of the country, or advance external interests in the political, economic, cultural or other sectors.

A practical consequence of this definition is that it gives an integrated view of several activities that are interconnected in external country marketing, which are not always harmonised as they should be.

For instance, cultural, education and science & technology promotion abroad, as well as media-generated images of the country, directly influence tourism, trade and investments. If we view all these activities as facets of pubic diplomacy (besides their direct value elsewhere), it becomes easier to develop an integrated policy to harmonise these activities.

This is precisely the way the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office handles PD. Its' Permanent Under Secretary (the civil service head, who also presides over the FCO's policy-making body called the 'board of management' in today's corporate-speak), chairs a 'public diplomacy strategy board' that brings together several agencies that are not under the FCO's charge "" the BBC, the British Council, the organizations handling education scholarships, plus the economic, culture and tourism promotion entities - to coordinate all these activities that involve the British image and its selling abroad.

In India we do not utilise comparable methods to implement PD as a regular activity. There is no mechanism for All India Radio or Doordarshan, influential as they remain in projecting India to neighbouring countries, for discussing their messages with the Ministry of External Affairs.

Nor do we have any public policy division in that ministry that concentrates on reaching out to our own public on foreign affairs; that task is left mainly to the political leaders via their public speeches and parliamentary statements. In March 2004, the Chinese foreign ministry created a new PD division and held a seminar with national stakeholders on implementing PD.

The India Shining campaign and the initiatives that both New Delhi and Islamabad have taken in 2004 represent innovative PD by political leaders. The first sought political mileage from the country's economic performance, which was surely not just the result of good monsoons.

Besides leveraging the 'feel good' sentiment of the middle class, it has tried to enlarge the constituency in favour of economic reforms, and linked this also with the country's image abroad. Once the dust of the elections has settled it will offer lessons on what such PD achieves, and should lead to more sophisticated image marketing which is part of governance.

In contrast, the India-Pakistan actions have altered, at least for now, the way the people of each country perceive the other.

Against the backdrop of all too recent impasse and bitterness over cross-border terrorism and Kashmir, the confrontation of Operation Parakram and the rest, these diplomacy moves have deliberately reached out to ordinary citizens, through restoration of transport links and contact, the exceptional cricket matches of March -April, and the visits of numerous business and other non-official delegations in both directions. In parallel, an official dialogue has recommenced, to resume in July 2004.

The cynics and 'realists' assert : nothing fundamental has changed, Musharraf is not to be trusted, the tactical shifts merely responded to US pressures. True, public euphoria can fade rapidly. Behind the warmth that greeted some 50,000 unlikely Indian cricket tourists, the old suspicions linger. It is surely prudent to be cautious.

Seen another way, what is new is the method of using the public at home and in the neighbouring country, to break old impasses and to re-fashion images.

Regardless of political systems, once the public has been brought into the bilateral process, they will be hard to push out "" communications technology, cable TV and all the other devices of the digital age, will keep them in the loop.

We can also count on redoubled mobilisation of the Track II and the Track III activists, an arena where Islamabad has appeared savvier than ourselves. The genie of public diplomacy is hard to push back into the bottle. One might also hope that Indian PD structures and methods at operational levels catch up with the bold conceptual actions.