Whenever we use the word ‘affair’, our mind starts working overtime thinking about sultry Bollywood romances or those office gossips you might be hearing inside elevators or in corridors, but here we are going to talk about the affairs of a different kind. In today’s edition of Thursdays with Tushar, we are going to talk about the business of Public Affairs.

Let’s do a ‘google’ on Public Affairs:

Public Affairs: Pub-lic af-fairs: plural noun: general matters:Issues that affect people generally, or issues arising from the relationship of the public to an organization such as a government body or a financial institution ( takes a plural verb )

noun:definition:field of study: the study of issues involving the interrelationships between the public and major institutions such as government ( takes a singular verb )

This is what I found while googling for a definition of Public Affairs from one of the web dictionaries. Pretty simple, isn’t it? Is practising public affairs as simple as it sounds here? In the next few posts we will learn more about public affairs and how it is being practiced in India.

Many of us witnessed the ‘licence raj’ in our country for many years and every businessman had to deal with various government departments more often than his counterparts in other countries, to create and manage the business. Considering this, if we go by the Darwin’s theory of evolution, I can bet many of us Indians would have better public affairs management capabilities than any of the races exist on this earth.

Now, we are in end 2007. The economy is fairly liberal and market forces are devising the business models. Global businesses are coming to India and Indian businesses are going global. People like Mukesh Ambani and L N Mittal are threatening the white members of billionaires list. The need for structured public affairs practice has increased manifold. Today’s businesses not only interact with consumers, suppliers, shareholders but are also greatly influenced by the socio-political stakeholders like government, NGOs, and last but not the least the media. Businesses need to pay attention to the requirement of these stakeholders in order to avoid any disapproval in the society which may result in to financial losses as well. In simple words, public affairs management is about creation, management and maintenance of organisation’s relations with these socio-political stakeholders.

Every business will have a different set and subset of these socio-political stakeholders. They all come in different sizes and shapes. For example, if there is a government in the list - there are various governments, which may affect your business - central government, state government, local government. If there are NGOs in the list, there could be plenty of players: International NGOs, national NOGs, state NGOs, local NGOs, gali NGOs, nukkad NGOs and so on…

When we meet after a short break next Thursday, we will talk about various tools used in public affairs management in the country and how effective they are.

Next week: Tools of Public Affairs

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india