By Sanjiv Kataria, IANS,
The youngest doctorate from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, earning his PhD from the hallowed portals of Tufts University in the US at age 22, Shashi Tharoor is known to be an exceptional thinker. In his nearly three-decade-long stint at the United Nations, where he rose to be the under secretary general for communications and public information in 2001, he displayed consummate diplomatic skills as well.
And, yet, this best selling author and gifted orator displayed little of either when he entered the Indian political scene. By speaking without thinking, he failed to retain an unblemished, dynamic and progressive image where many young, ivy league alumnus parliamentarians succeeded.
If his term as a cabinet minister has been cut short to just 10 months, it isn’t because of lack of calibre but due to acts that have sullied his image and that of the ruling party and the cabinet. As a communications specialist, he failed to predict the negative fallout of his tweets, speeches and actions.
Tharoor, the parliamentarian, adopted new age tools to portray the image of a dynamic leader (read habitual user of Twitter), something the political fraternity correctly read as brash. As a junior minister, he projected a contrarian image, which his cabinet colleagues again correctly read as a habitual challenge of accepted policies, thus leading to a trust deficit.
So, while the elected representative of Thiruvananthapuram found no impropriety in batting for a cricket team for his state, the public perceived it to be a favour to his ‘girlfriend’.
Is Tharoor so naive that his audiences perceived each move to mean exactly the opposite of what he intended? How did he fail to act (or was it intentional posturing) on the feedback from senior colleagues, his constituency and a caustic media? How did he continue to hop between the fire and the frying pan without any of his close advisors pointing out the immense injury caused to his image?
How did he fail to anticipate a crisis each time? And why did he not prepare himself well before it boomeranged? Why did he betray the confidence of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson and the prime minister, who handpicked him for the position of a junior minister even though he was a first time parliamentarian? And how could he burden them with repeated embarrassments with his frequent acts of delinquency?
By showing a lack of sensitivity to his own image he let the shine fade away from the image of his cabinet colleagues and the party as well. When you are a part of the team, it is important to align your goals with those of the company, family or even party goals and value system. Just because you offered a contrary view in the cabinet meeting does not give you the right to tweet your position. Once the cabinet decides, the team of ministers has to implement, unless the environment has changed and calls for a fresh look.
Anyone who has read about Wilbur Schramm’s theory of communication knows that you have to speak the language which your audience (in this case, the voter) understands with ease and devoid of any distortion. And you have to learn to accept that your audience cannot read the finer nuances of words that need a dictionary to bring forth all the subtexts. In a sense, Tharoor’s frequent tweeting and speeches showed little respect for local considerations.
Tweeting is a medium where you respond instantaneously. The 140-character medium is devoid of ability to offer a deliberated, well-thought out and mature response.
The biggest sacrilege is to go against the social norms of a society that you live in. And we have to accept that the social norms in India will continue to be different from those of the Western world. It would be well nigh impossible for the general public to accept a legally married minister courting his girlfriend and seeking favours for her, openly.
Anyone who is in public life needs to realise that the media does not draw lines between your personal life and official life. And you certainly cannot instigate senior media professionals with questions like ‘So what tough questions are you going to ask me today?’ Or ‘Why does the media not ask me about my work?’ Here again, the experienced communicator forgot the strategic value of silence.
Scanning through some of the appointment ads of many UN bodies in the old issues of The Economist throws up a prominent line to the effect: ‘any attempt to influence the appointment will disqualify candidature’. How could a UN veteran miss this point when he enquired of the status of Kerala IPL agreement papers from Lalit Modi?
Tharoor should use the time away from ministerial responsibilities to introspect and learn a lesson or two from the experience of multinational brands like KFC, McDonald’s or even MTV to replenish the trust deficit he managed to create through his acts.
(21.04.2010 – Sanjiv Kataria is a strategic communications and public relations counsel. He can be reached at [email protected])