Colonel Satish Singh Lalotra
‘Life is all about perception. Positive versus negative. Whichever you choose will affect and more than likely reflect your outcomes.
—–Sonya Teklai.
The inauguration of winter Olympics at Beijing on 04th of February 2022 has exposed the nefarious nexus between major sporting events and human rights groups as also the responsibility of governments, sporting bodies, corporate sponsors, broadcasters and other affiliates with these Olympic Games. By making QI Fabao their regimental commander with the PLA as a torch bearer during winter Olympics has brought to the fore once again the time tested tenet of our northern neighbour’s master strategist ‘Sun Tzu’ – ‘The supreme act of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”. In this tenet our neighbour has mixed a liberal dose of ‘perception management’ by putting a face which represents its aggressive stance and flagrant politicization of winter Olympics. Welcome to a very ticklish issue of ‘Perception management” which the major powers of the world have been using off and on to pursue their Geo-political objectives with impunity. One of the masters of ‘Perception management” was the propaganda minister of Adolf Hitler , the quintessential Joseph Goebbels who during the 2WW single handedly prepared the initial ground of conquering by Germany entire Europe by his vitriolic propaganda warfare often changing the perceptions in the minds of targeted countries.
India on the other hand has somehow a very long list of failed perception management strategies to counter its adversaries around its own neighbourhood as also in the world often undercutting its own efforts.More about it later in this write up.’Perception management’ is a term which has been a US Army terminology and connotes all those actions to convey and or deny selective information and indicators to influence their emotions, motives and objective reasoning as well as to intelligence system and leaders at all levels to influence official estimates ultimately resulting in foreign behaviour favourable to originator’s objectives. China is precisely doing this the world over and more so in context with India it has removed all stops to further its aggressive’ Perception management’ strategy. The aim of my writing this article is to use some strategies of ‘Perception management’ as advanced by ‘Carlo Kopp’ to decode India’s foreign relations in terms of its neighbouring countries. As per Carlo Kopp ‘Preparation” is the first strategy or step towards ‘Perception management”. It stands to logic that this strategy lays emphasis to have clear goals and knowing the ideal position you want people to have.
Now let us juxtapose the same principle or precept to Sino-Indian relations as well as to other countries in our immediate environment. Reams of papers have been written regarding the hyphenated relations between the two Asian giants.But the corner stone of all this was the lack of “preparation” as enunciated by Carlo Kopp to deal with our northern neighbour pre and post 1947. India could never prepare itself to deal either with Chiang-kai-sheikh’s nationalistic forces in terms of making that country understand our clear policy goals once the British left nor were we comfortable with Mao Tse Tung’s Communist regime who considered us as reactionary forces whereas both the Asian countries threw the yolk of foreign occupation more or less in the same time line. In fact once the communist regime took over that country in 1949, our foreign office mandarins were at logger heads with each other such as the like of Sardar KM Panickker, Jagatsingh Mehta, KPS Menon etc. Each trying to interpret the Chinese intentions in his inimitable way and evolving his own strategy to deal with our northern neighbour thereby advising Nehru in the formative years of our foreign policy.NirupamaRao our ex foreign secretary and ambassador to that country has very succinctly brought out the discordant notes in our foreign policy in her book ‘The fractured Himalayas in the initial years of our ‘Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai’ days. The boundary problem which to this date is the major friction point amongst the two Asian giants was further aggravated by Nehru’s obdurate stand that the issue was ‘Non-negotiable’.
Cut to the present times the present stand-off with both Pakistan and China is that of ‘Unclear goals’ and knowing the ideal position India wants its people to hold. The ‘Strategy of Credibility’ is the second in line to build an edifice of ‘Perception management’. It lays stress on the ‘consistency of information’ rather than in dribs and drabs. Often dovetailing prejudices or expectations into this strategy can pay handsome dividends. The flip side of this ‘Credibility’ theory is that expectations or prejudices shouldn’t be built around or on false narratives as happened during the 1962 Sino-Indian border war when the national expectations were so hyped up to the actual ground situation that the country’s belligerent mood didn’t allow any space to Nehru to backtrack from his earlier stated version of evicting the Chinese from our border areas. A similar type of hyped up situation was witnessed in the short but intense Kargil skirmishes in 1999 when General Pervez Musharraf’s bellicosity put the entire sub-continent on the edge of a nuclear exchange. Prejudices and expectations should be built around solid past and present evolving situations which can stand the scrutiny of test of time.’Multichannel support’ is another very effective strategy for building ‘Perception management’. As per Carlo Kopp a nation state should employ various means of ‘Multichannel support” to buttress its Perception management claim. In India’s case the various track-2 diplomacies in the form of people to people contact , special train services between India and Pakistan ,opening of Kartarpur sahib corridor all come under the ambit of ‘Multichannel support” to build a favourable perception of ours in the world.
The above postulation though a very attractive step in perception building is fraught with the problem of ‘One up man ship’ which is on display very often leading to less than expected output in such cases when put to test.A Case in point is that of the crisis which unfolded during the infamous hijacking of IC-814 to Kandhar in Afghanistan in December 1999. Initially the crisis management group led by our NSA Brijesh Mishra kept on debating the endless possibilities of coming to grips about the fast evolving situation changing by the hour but dithered in stopping the aircraft from leaving the country after refueling from Raja sansi /Amritsar airport. As if this was not enough, our the then foreign minister Jaswant Singh accompanied the released terrorists to Kandhar in a special aircraft as part of the deal much to the chagrin of the opposition parties and the country .Compared with the Israeli action at Entebbe airport in 1976 when in a similar hijacking case their air chief Maj General Benny Peled along with the elite ‘Sayeret Matkal’ took off with a national resolve to punch a hole in the narrative of the terrorists ,our action reeked of a very weak display of ‘Perception management’ amongst ourselves as also to the world at large. Similarly in the recent past , our leader from the opposition , Rahul Gandhi on his own volition paid an impromptu visit to the Chinese embassy in Delhi to find out first-hand the fast evolving situation at Doklam without keeping the government of the day in the loop. Such discordant voices do more harm than good to the overall perception of India.
As a silver lining having democratic dispensation since its inception, India has been witness to many a government following a very centralized control and closing its ranks when faced with an extraordinary situation such as during the emergency days with all its agencies putting up a joint effort to buttress its positive perception among the comity of nations. One such strategy which augments ‘Perception management’ is the ideology of ‘Centralized control’ as mentioned above, which in fact propagates employing various entities to do their bidding such as propaganda ministry or bureaus etc. Perception management in international relations is the sum total of ideas of a nation state beamed across the world through various media channels be it electronic, visual, newsprint man to man interaction etc.To take a simple example, the electronic media i.e the radio stations in the border areas of J&K and NE paint not so rosy picture to say the least. According to Radio Kashmir(AIR) sources there is no concrete propaganda to build up a positive ‘Perception management’ in the hearts and minds of our neighbouring countries . On the contrary the focus is on national integrity , sustaining democratic ethos , and positive developmental themes which do not cut much ice with the people across. Nearly all of the programmes from the border areas are directed towards China and Pakistan. The jousting is most lively in J&K and Arunachal Pradesh where AIR has been strengthening its infrastructure and programme content.
A similar game is being played out in the Arunachal Pradesh where the air is thick with Chinese radio channels. A few of these channels are in the Tibetan language which is understood by the local population of Arunachal Pradesh in abundance. To counter them AIR has woken up a tad late and has started 24×7 news channels with strong beaming signals in the area. But there are problems of large ‘Shadow areas “where Indian signals do not reach or the Chinese signals drown them. Hence it is a long way for India to build an ecosystem of successful ‘Perception management” in areas having direct bearing on national security. ‘Perception management ‘in international relations is a mix of Strategies of ‘Security, Flexibility and Coordination as espoused by Carlo Kopp amongst various organisations which are placed in a hierarchical pattern in order to maintain consistency and synchronized dissemination of information. Many a time these hierarchies get enmeshed into a self-defeating game losing the larger picture of ‘Perception management’ to be portrayed to the world at large.The latest Chinese pattern of ongoing attempts to intimidate its neighbours particularly India by pitching its regimental commander as a torch bearer should have been equally met with an Indian riposte long time back by making its SFF march on the Rajpath on 26 th January for the whole world to watch with admiration .Relying on world powers to do our homework in ‘Perception management doesn’t behove of a regional power which we so openly boast of in South Asia . Time we peeped into our own backyard to do our job, the sooner the better.
(The writer is a retired army officer)
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