Government and Communication Strategy

We have all seen Governments grappling with the challenge of selling an agenda to its citizens. There are numerous instances of governments unable to push through serious reform agendas and perish in the process. Whether it be hiking tariffs and user charges or increasing any kind of taxes, or cutting costs by introducing newer technologies or pruning bureaucracy, or initiating collaboration with the private sector by privatization or outsourcing, we face a very serious problem in communicating the message to the stakeholders. In its absence these reforms invariably remain still-born or meanders along directionless.

Governments need to be in continuous communication with its citizens on every issue of governance - service delivery standards, effective utilisation of civic assets, reforms and changes, and developing civic repsonsibility in citizens. This assumes greater importance in view of the emergence of the forces of globalisation and liberalisation, which have led to massive changes in service delivery and governance. It is necessary that citizens are aware of the challenges facing them due to these changes and reforms and they need to be better informed about how to adapt to this changing environment. If the citizens are not properly equipped in dealing with these changes and new technologies, both the city and the citizen, in particular, risks falling behind, with serious medium and long term socio-economic and political consequences.

Let me try to run through some of these issues. One of the biggest and ever enduring problems facing our cities is that arising from severe deficiency or even absence, in many cases, of civic responsibility among our citizens. Our urban governance priorities also find no place for proactively inculcating this softer and much more important issue of developing urban social capital. Urban administrators focus immense amounts of energy on infrastructure development and service delivery issues. If we could devote even a small percentage of this time and priorities in developing civic sense among our citizens, it would be an invaluable multiplier on ensuring more effective utilization of these assets and efficient delivery of civic services.

I can list out a number of infrastructure assets and civic services that are inefficienctly utilized due to the scarcity of social capital. In Vijayawada, for the past year or so, we have introduced door-to-door basket collection across the City, and have been encouraging people to collect all their daily garbage in a basket ever morning, so that a tricycle can come and pick up the same. Despite tremendous energy spent at all levels of the sanitation machinery in implementing this, we continue to have serious littering problems. In many residential areas, garbage and waste continue to be thrown into drains and roads. I can't think of any reason other than lack of even the basic civic sense for this persistance with littering despite the introduction of door-to-door basket collection.

Our water supply systems suffer from a chronic problem of wastage, reflected in our high Non Revenue Water (NRW) ratios. By any reasonable approximation at least 15-25% of our water is wasted by the citizens themselves. Similar figures apply for electricity consumption too. Our newly laid Under Ground Drainage (UGD) networks get immediately clogged with household waste and clothes and start overflowing. Even in areas with UGD network despite repeated efforts, people connect only their latrines to the sewerage line, and continue to let out their kitchen, toilet, and other waste water into the open drains. We encroach into the smallest available road margin and cover the drains with our steps, thereby prevent its proper cleaning.

Less said about our traffic sense the better. Each one of us seem to think that the road space is our sovereign right and we are operating in a vacuum around us. We do not even remotely realise the consequences of our actions on our co-road users. We are loath to follow even the traffic signals, cut across lanes as per our wish, and want road cuttings on dividers at every imaginable location which makes you wonder why have the divider at all.

Urban governance and service delivery is undergoing massive changes, and it is imperative that we take along all the stakeholders with us in this journey. We need huge resources to fund our massive infrastructure requirements. Funding agencies are understandably concerned that these resources be spent most efficiently and we get value for money from these investments. Naturally the focus has been turned on the inefficiencies and wastages in our system - low tax collection, massive free-riding on services, poorly targetted subsidies, huge NRW in water supply, sub-optimal utilization of assets etc. We need to embrace newer technologies, and work and service delivery processes like outsourcing and water meters; newer financing models like Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) and Public Private Partnership (PPP); work in greater collaboration with private agencies through Partnerships and Privatization; put in place mechanisms to ensure sustainability of systems through adequate cost recovery and user charges.

I have not seen Government at any level, except for a few departments like Tourism, take communication strategy with any seriousness. The traditional Public Relations Officer (PRO) arrangement, whose only expertise lies in circulating dry and unreadable press notes about the routine activities of the Government, is not suited for modern day public communication challenges. In an age of diverse and rapidly growing communication channels, it is necessary for Governments to have a serious look at its communication policy. Routine and simple advertisements will not help us in keeping our surroundings clean, or reduce water or electricity wastage, or drain off our sewerage into the UGD network, or follow our traffic rules or help citizens understand the changes sweeping the world and how they should be adapting to those changes.

Professional communication strategy needs to be in place for communicating both the softer issues relating to developing civic repsonsibility and those relating to reforms and changes. We need to leverage the strengths of all the different channels of communication - electronic visual and audio media, newspapers, Internet, billboards etc. The content of the message has to be prepared keeping in mind the different audiences and their repsective access to the different media. In short, we need a full time communication strategy team in place. This is especially important in Urban Local Bodies, where massive urbanization, the huge infusion of funds and the tide of reforms under implementation, necessitates mandatory stakeholder participation and therefore the need for being in constant communication with them.

If we are to successfully address these challenges, we ought to dispense with our routine PRO and outsource our communication strategy to a professional agency. Even then it will be one hell of a task, but one which is one of our most demanding challenges. Unfortunately we still have not woken up to this challenge.