I was in at the Bangalore’s Forum Mall when I got the first call about the bomb blasts behind it in Madiwala. Having grown up during the time when Punjab insurgency was at its height and traveling through Delhi was a hurdle race through checkposts, the Bangaloreans (is there such an entity?) response to the Friday happenings was interesting. There was not even a controlled aggression visible on the faces of the security staff of the Mall. I actually walked back into the Mall a second time to put up a ticket I left in the PVR vending machine and voila this time I dint even pass through the metal detector because the Security Staff was checking with the public on where the next blast had been reported by ?? (TV or radio). The next blast was somewhere near Adugodi, a close by area.

By telling you all this my intention is not to eulogize how I proverbially escaped etc etc or lament the internal security situation in India (homeland security as the Americans call it), Im building up to a point which for all of us in Communications is a gold mine to debate – Does India have a Crisis Communications Policy? Isnt it time we did?

Worldwide and in India, the Industry has by far been quick to grasp that while management of a crisis is critical, the advance alerts or post crisis response has communication at its core making it one of the key factor of “to what extent” the crisis impacts the stakeholders. When we speak of National or state level crisis, these stakeholders are us – the common wo/man.

I spent years in newspapers and amongst other beats buried my nose into the power sector to understand why all the MW produced did not reach the consumers and YET s/he paid for the entire power production and WHY therefore the power company was answerable to the people for its process management. Part of this process was T& D losses and some of this was attributable to those next to the consumers house who hooked onto power lines to steal it without paying! This consumer when told so could be galvanised to protect and report power theft!

This experience has come really handy in understanding the skill of mass communications and I now believe that the credibility of the source of Communication is a subject worth a study – be it a corporate or a country. Even after hours of whatever was happening over the past weekend whether you were in Ahmedabad, Bangalore or Surat, the main source of information was the media / journalists and some tidbits here and there on Crisis Management by local authorities. What and where was the citizens credible / believable / actionable source of information? Till today some TV channels in Karnataka continue to insist that the blasts left 2 dead and most others put the number at 1.

A few months back, the Computer Society of India, was doing an issue on ICTs and asked me to author one of the articles. In writing that my attempt was to extrapolate learnings in the Industry and investigate if the corporate processes can be juxtaposed to how a country and its management communicates with its stakeholders, specifically during a crisis. In this article I alluded to a model that can be implemented by the top management of the Business House (India) and its Strategic Business Units (States). I just got to know that the magazine was published and therefore feel at liberty to discuss that idea in this forum as well.

At the heart of such a model are the same few questions that chief communication officers in companies ask their managements when penning crisis communication manuals.

Scenario build up – Kinds of Crisis experienced in the past and feared for the future (both for India & SBUs)
Designated Spokespersons and Chief spokesperson who are credible and their call to action is heeded to by stakeholders

Types of stakeholders in each crisis

Channels of communication to reach the stakeholders

Human Networks to use when ICTs (Information Communication technologies) fail as they almost always do in a natural disaster

Understand the holding statement concept

Who prepares and who contributes to the holding statement

Practice runs at frequent intervals of the crisis scenarios …

A potential draft of such a policy lies in the answers to the above questions and in the article I answered each head assuming that the Corporate in question is India, the Strategic Business Units were the States and the chief communication officer was myself. All answers were based on the assumption that Ive not been debriefed yet by the nation’s CEO or the SBU units but I’m building answers to the questions through intelligent hypothesis.

I can’t reproduce the article here but I hope I’m able to convey that such a model can be built for India – more efficiently if bigger brains than yours or mine go to work on it. In fact quite possible that this is being done somewhere but as a citizen if I look at what communication reached me over the weekend, its obviously not yet in place. Take for example the city of my current domicile, Bangalore, I as a citizen don’t know who to believe when reasons are enlisted on what happened to my mobiles on Friday at 3 PM – when the somebody tells me that mobile phone operators jammed the signals post the blasts so that people couldn’t spread rumors, I believe it. When others say the cell phone were jammed because Police wanted to stop miscreants from triggering live bombs using mobiles as possible detonators, I nod and almost believe it. The easy answer we all know as citizens is that the cell network was jammed because panicky citizens were trying to check on each others safety but then that’s “so obvious” an answer that you would say nahhhh! Quite possible its the Crisis Management Standard Operating Procedure given out to service providers but do I know this ? No. Maybe its top secret confidential modus operandi that a citizen needn’t know about but do I know that or have heard about it? No.

Take another example of credible spokesperson . Lets assume that the Chief Minister of Karnataka is the chief spokesperson whom the citizens of the SBU believe in as its head of management (please don’t drag us into the mindless debate that state chief secretary should be the chief spokesperson since bureaucracy are the real managers!) . What information was coming out from the CMs office at the time – the anchor sitting in Mumbai was asking the Bangalore correspondent about updates and all he had was this – a meeting at 5pm had been convened to take stock of the situation. That’s it. Any advisory for the citizens ? Hmmm..Oh yeah I did hear somebody say that the CM said, “Nothing to worry”. Of course the next day a live bomb was found outside a mall in a flower pot, left by a man in red T shit, which was defused by a bomb squad. Later the media wrote that a cobblers wife clipped the wires which hung by its sides the day before which could possibly have been the reason for it going dead.! I’d love to explain this in detail but its as funny as its sad..all this in India’s IT capital no less

So to cut a long story short, we really need a Crisis Communication Policy in India as we are surely and quickly becoming the eye of the storm..and a crisis hits only once and effects directly or indirectly – after that there is pin drop silence or a deafening noise made by those alive to take stock of what could have been done instead. If the lines between crisis management and crisis communications seem to blur, then they should as the latter is the core of the former and its time we gave it some thought.

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