Media management - India needs to learn

Inspite of having immense talent in our foreign and defence policy establishments, the one thing India lacks is effective public relations. Our skills when it comes to handling the media glare and information dissemination is dismal to say the least.

We absolutely do not know how to handle even our own media. Most of the top leadership of the country think that yapping in accented queen's english means effective media management. Its bullshit.

And when it comes to media management, one congressman comes to my mind immediately. Its none other than our Jaipal Reddy ji. Nothing personal against him, but whenever one places a mic before him, he at once lapses into a verbal diarrhea. Complete, quality, hundred percent non-stop nonsense. And his every line smacks of arrogance written all over.

Another person who I admire a lot, nevertheless had very poor media relations. Its our very own late former PM Shri Narasimha Rao ji. In all his years as PM, the media would try all the trick in the book to get him to talk or just smile. Nope. No success there. He is perhaps the most non-media friendly PM ever !

Ofcourse our Vajpayee ji is a class of his own. Famous for his pregnant pauses and witty one liners, he was the darling of the media. But unfortunately his prowess did not extend into the english language media though.

Among all politicians, one person stands tall. Its our Laloo Prasad ji. Whatever may be his drawbacks, media management is certainly not among them. The press just loves him and his style. Something so earthy about him that endears him to every reader.

Anyways, our neighbouring country somehow seems to always come out ahead of us in the media war. Especially under the present president, they seemed to have perfected the art of propaganda. All bullshit is beautifully sugar coated, dipped in chocolate and wrapped wonderfully that it sells like hot cakes (no pun intended).

And when it comes to information management and distribution through the internet - we falter big time.

I have visited some of the Indian government websites like the The Parliament of India - Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha, Prime Minister's and President's, etc. None of them have information organized in such a manner that a visitor could reach them easily. Information is scattered all across. There is no proper information flow, no specific color scheme, no proper page layout or bahaviour. Its all there but completely disorganized.

India is the place where the world goes for IT !!

Take a look at the Pakistan President's website. I was pretty impressed. Very neatly arranged and categorized. Information flow has been tuned well. A very 'usable' site. As I said all sugar coated, dipped in chocolate...

Check it out when you folks find time.