 especially in the wake of whatever is happening right now in the capital city. I have with me actually people who are far more experienced on public policy, so it's a very tough ask for me to moderate this session. I've already had a class room while briefing these people, so hopefully I'm going to do a good job. I am more under the scanner than these people. So to actually begin with, what I'm going to do is, you know, in the interest of the time, it's hardly like 20-25 minutes, we are supposed to spend on this topic. And I don't think we'll be able to pick up more than two-three questions, which we can discuss. And what I'm going to do is, rather than actually introduce these people with no introduction, they're all experts in their own fields and established leaders. So what I'm going to do is actually start the topic. Basically there are a lot of terms around public policy right now, floating in the industry, you know, public policy, public affairs, government affairs, regulatory affairs. I'm actually going to start with actually Rahul, you know. Maybe if he can actually explain, like, is, like, do we see these terms being used by a lot of corporates? Or do we see an umbrella term coming in, coming into the picture? Also the interest of the audience, like, what does public policy mean in the sense there are so many terms being used by different people, different corporates. Thank you, Aman. Good afternoon, everybody. I think it's indeed the case, and there are two reasons for it. One is the evolution of how the communications industry has taken place in the last two decades, how the government relations function has evolved over the last two decades. And we tend to look at the United States and Europe as some of the markets where some of these models are already involved. So if you look at, there is, you're right, in terms of, there is that lot of confusion also around what does public affairs mean. So if you have to look at kind of an overarching definition, public affairs is a function or a role that is about managing your business environment. It combines government relations, it combines communications, issue management, and corporate citizenship strategies. And the objective of these four sort of pillars is to influence public policy, is to build a strong reputation, and find common ground with stakeholders. So in terms of an overarching sort of definition of public affairs, is what these components are. And I'm sure the co-panelists can elaborate on how within that the distinction between policy advocacy, stakeholder engagement, government relations, and regulatory affairs. So yeah, you know, there could be many dimensions to public policy. What is of particular interest to people like us that how can, when we're representing corporations and their interests, how can we have an environment where we are able to navigate and shape the public policy in support of the business of the organizations that we represent. Very simplistically, very directly. And if we do that, then of course it's successful. We have to of course balance the interest of other stakeholders as well. So that is one. Second thing is, I think today's topic, and I will just take off on this, is to do with the role of new media, the new media marketing strategy in shaping. So we all know about conventional public affairs, and how people have been doing it in the old school world, and that is something that's been going on at work. But using digital media, the new media strategies, is something which is new to public affairs as well. Like it is new to every other discipline as we heard, other panels and other experts, you know, since it's to the morning. So how can we really help and shape public policy? Can we or can we not is a fundamental question. And if we can't, then what else do we do? And so that is something which I would like to put probably raise this as a thought and then have other questions with my family. So that brings me to actually the real question. Basically, the roles, the role of communication in public policy. Is there a full-time role? Is there a support role? What is it? Maybe Arun sir can elaborate on it. Thank you Aman. As the lines are blurring between corporate communication, public policies, corporate affairs, public affairs, and we are very good at coining new and new terms. There was a time when we used to call the entire function as VR function subsequently. We called it corporate communications and then we had related functions like public policy, public affairs, corporate affairs. I personally believe that they are distinct functions, but they have to work very closely with each other. They have to support each other. People in public policy and corporate affairs, they have to interact with influencers and decision makers and they need support from corporate communication function to strengthen their case. Dilip spoke of digital media. I share very interesting example. We were running a campaign which could have been perceived as something negative for the oil and gas ministry and we released this campaign. We managed to get a quotation from the Prime Minister of India and we went public with that and we were getting a major pushback from the oil ministry saying that they may not like the fact that we are talking about the oil and gas ministry. The basic messaging was that we wanted India to be self-sufficient instead of importing oil from Kuwait and other countries. Interestingly, after getting a quotation from the Prime Minister, we managed to get the oil and gas ministry to tweet that message. Once he tweeted that message, we were home. So after that they were no protest from any other sector. So that establishes how corporate communication and corporate policy functions need to work very closely. Latika, you have a lot of views. You want to share something? Interesting. Because I take great pride in being a communications professional. I've spent almost 15 years working in PR agencies and then in corporate communications public affairs and most recently moved into public policy role at Mastercard. And I completely agree with Arun on what he's talking about and I think in the recent time with this whole technology disruption social media, the conventional playbook by which a government affairs or public affairs used to play with can change in a matter of minutes. And I also, in context of what is happening recently without talking more about it, the best policy FSR when we are listening to the people who are being impacted by it. And that's where the strategic communication plays a great role because we can get that narrative right of getting those people who are impacted both internal and external civil society media to talk on behalf of the organization. So that's exactly my views are what I would want to echo what Arun said. Latika, you moved into this role recently. What made you believe that you can do this? So I think the belief is in the fact that communication is playing a very huge role in the way organizations are shaping their policy narratives. And being in Mastercard, I worked very closely with the policy team when I joined Mastercard and especially, fortunately for me when I joined Mastercard and within six months demonetization was announced and we all have kind of enjoyed and all suffered from it. But that brought in the whole role of communication at the forefront of the company. We were no longer the team who were making press releases but shaping the narrative. And I think one challenge which the community has been part of the team at the global front leading communication narrative was differentiating between what we are saying publicly and what we are saying in terms of policy. And I think that's a first step in the way a communication person can bring in the difference in the organization. I think the second thing which made me feel confident that I will take this role is that there are a lot of skills which are very complementary to the policy role. I think we all are very good in managing multiple stakeholders that's exactly what we need to do in government affairs or public policy. Second is narratives. I can't stress enough the importance of getting the narrative right otherwise we'll be just called to use the term loosely fixer and doing the meetings with no outcome and more and more organizations are focusing on outside in approach. And I think that's where the role of communication and primarily now that I'm a policy person becomes important because you're getting that outside approach to the organizations in because the strategies have to be made keeping the broader business and economic and political context in mind. You may be having a great product but in the environment that we are in it may not be even getting launched. So keeping that in mind, dovetailing strategy according to those and I think what is most important in policy is also removing the ambiguity to business continuity and that's where being in communication you're used to being constantly in touch with media, social media having your listening ears on all the time. So I think all in all I feel communication people can make great policy people and there is a huge scope for kind of making a shift if one wants to do that. That brings me to Raji. Raji, the work in healthcare sector and again there is a lot of demand for public policy situation. Like how tough is it this role compared to a communications role given that we have all the still content, we think we have great relationships, we know how to fix the narrative but how different actually on ground is this role? That's a very prudent question which you've asked because the role which we studied maybe a decade, decade and a half back was purely from a communications point of view was purely from something which was on image management was on reputational issues. Now what evolved over the last couple of years and especially when I look back into my almost last 10 years in the health sector itself is this role needs to really dovetail with lawyers, with regulatory people, with scientific and research audiences and then you also have to have heard them in such a way that your entire stakeholder list which you have needs to align to that thought process. So in a way this role has really moved from the regular mass communication and communications role to a more niche understanding role. I for instance have really gone down and sat with my you know guys to understand what the laws are. So for instance right now my office has a big problem when a reputational issue comes because stents are considered by virtue of our psyche itself to be honest stents are now by the government of India costing a damn 30,000 bucks only. And when people call me and you have stents I really laugh at them and tell them look stents ka toh rate ye hai but then you actually have to see what's your hospital will coming at the end of the day. So there I have to be trained on regulatory issues. So a hospital at the end of the day would come up with x amount of surgeries or you know experts use the kind of nutritionist which you were interacting with and all that. So you need to understand the repercussions of these kind of you know other people who are actually impacting your role. So I read what regulatory affairs was. I read what the law of the land said on stents there is a NPPA directive. So what was that directive? Why was it important for me to understand that directive? Because tomorrow my MD, CEO or my head of research or my head of you know the innovation policy setup itself is going to speak at a large gathering and if he is not able to communicate what the public is or what is required for them to understand from my chapter itself I'm not going to do justice with my role itself. So it depends on industry to industry sector to sector. So I think the role has changed over the years. We need to attune ourselves more. It's not the regular reading of newspapers and magazines that we really have to catch up with. We get enough of that to our you know Twitter's and online platform. It's now moving to other areas of niche understanding. So I would just like to add to that. In fact that's one area where I think if you're looking at transition from communications to public affairs or a public policy role you have to upscale yourself. The way I see policy advocacy is about four keys of public affairs or public advocacy. The first key is policy. Do you understand policy? What Rajeev was talking about? If I'm not talking about you reading a viewpoint in a paper and then forming a viewpoint basis of viewpoint. You have to read the rules. You have to read the regulations. That's your first key. The second key is process. What is the process of policy formulation in the government? And therefore where are the areas of intervention and when do you undertake those interventions? The third, public. Always and always the fundamental of public policy is greater good or greater number of people. If you have your policy goals, if you have your corporate reputation aligned to that, then in that case you will have a brilliant program. And finally is the press where I also integrate the social media, which has played a very, very active role as Dilip was also talking about where how the policy is being influenced. So if you look at it, if you have to get the core right, otherwise if I don't understand policies, I have not spent time understanding what are the actual facts of the case, I will not be able to effectively deliver on my advocacy strategy. I wish to add to that. Very well said, Rahul. We are respected only if we are equipped with good information, whether it is media, whether it is bureaucrats, influences, ministers. If we are well equipped with information, data, trends, then we are respected. That is one. Second is we have to think from influences perspective also. As a rule bureaucrats and ministers cannot be seen to be favouring any private company or any government company for that matter because they like to be favouring the public at large like Rahul correctly mentioned. So therefore we have to build a scenario and sometimes bureaucrats themselves suggest to us in case you can get couple of articles favouring this policy then we can consider. That is number one. Number two, what is government sensitive about is what's in it for them. As long as your suggested policy does not impact their financials, their financial out go from them, we can establish that. And second is it favours the public at large. They are open to considering those policies and in case we are equipped with that information then we have much greater chances of being accepted. I think Rahul spoke about the fact that we need to understand how the policy works and I say that you need to understand the anatomy of the government. How does the government function in the country? We are a democracy. And the way democracy works is that we elect our leaders based on representation. It's all about the business of influencing public policies about to look through the right kind of representation. So something is being written about by media or something is being talked about on social media then probably not influence the eventual policy. While it will warm up the environment a little bit but it will not influence the policy eventually unless you have not made the representation to the right channel. The democratic process provides for avenues and forums for you to put the voice across which has to come from credible sources very importantly and I think that is where this whole issue about the traditional media versus digital media and influencing policy is where the digital media kind of loses its course because of so much of fake news and we don't know who is saying what is really the credibility of that information. So I think this is where the national media players are very important roles are always here from people and clients, our clients that we want to see more viewpoints on a certain issue in traditional media and not on digital media because that is what has what works. So otherwise the other dimension which we kind of always get confused about is the fact that government today is using a lot of digital media themselves. And that is the other aspect of the topic which is public service. So my view is that digital media is great for government to deliver and engage with our citizens for delivering public service but need not be the best medium to be able to influence policy on a standalone basis. I think Twitter's Seva is one interesting example. So I don't know how many of you know Twitter has a special product for government of India called Twitter Seva. So we have memories of the late Pushma Swaraj acting on people's tweets and stuff like that and just viewing them in tragic times. And that is not something which is just a response to please because there is technology which is working behind sending tickets to the right people within the government system. It's like a mailing system the way it works with our citizens. So those kind of interventions are great interventions but when it comes to probably corporates don't have a Seva which they can use to talk to government and that is what is going to probably simplify things. I'll just add one more point, very interesting point we made about Twitter. We are tempted to tag PMO and relevant minister whenever we are making a policy point. You know there are certain things that government of India likes and we may not see the using those points in case we are giving a suggestion regarding changing a policy. We may like to add oh how it is generate employment it will enhance employment, it will enhance economic development. These things are positive because we need to be very careful because PMO very strictly monitors who is saying what to one wrong step there and then it might backfire. So let's be careful, let's be articulate well in line with what is conducive to the modern government. I want to share a small example. I was speaking to one of the members very important members part of a team of one of the regional political parties and it was just about how they look at digital media and media per se. So what I heard today of course people are breaking more news on digital platforms first. From a political process and from a politician's point of view it's always about listening to the constituencies. Any communication which corporates do and I believe they don't do enough of that which is targeted at constituencies. I don't know how many multinational really spend a lot of time and effort in going to talk about issues in regional languages so that people react in a certain way and that kind of pushes the policy makers and goes up because long term campaign. So that is something which is still an unexplored area and communication would lie in terms of talking to constituencies like government stock and getting their reactions to then shape the policy in a certain way. That brings me to my last question for the families. I believe that collaboration helps in actually bringing the real favorable outcome on the public policy front. Every function has a role to play. Can you give all of you can give actually one example of the implementation role in a favorable policy outcome. I will actually flip it around and I will say that using both the sides conventionally was something which worked around and especially when I talk about the health sector. Utilizing the fact that we had a robust communication backup with us coupled with the fact that they were policy makers and here I am talking about parliamentarians who were heads of the various standing these are these standing committees which these guys have. So we got all the 19 parliamentarians who were engaged with the health sector specifically whether it's based on nutrition whether it's maternal and child health whether it's public health issues or industrial health issues we caught them engaged came up with a robust media and a communications plan dovetailed both of them to showcase a public policy impact. Simple. Do you mind if you want a name? I will share one more example going beyond within the organization regarding the collaboration. Interestingly what we learned is that PMO has given targets to all ministers for their social media presence and it is monitored on daily basis. So one opportunity that gives us is in case whatever little job we are doing in social space if we can give credit to our respective minister and let them tweet it before we do and then we retweet it means happy we are happy that is the best way of collaborating with them. So I will talk more about the unconventional ways of collaboration. So I think one way to work is that if big issue that a customer is faced I think it's very important to build coalition and communicate on behalf of the coalition. So what we have also done is bring in competition as part of that coalition talk on behalf of the customer of what should be done and what is not going right and that has worked very well. So I think that's one unconventional way I can talk about. I just want to add that in terms of looking at collaboration I think we need a consulting firm which straddles both the world's public policy as well as communication as well as digital media for a lot of our clients benefit from an integrated approach and I strongly and firmly believe in that because of the course of it is your message and the narrative that we are talking about and I think from a communication standpoint the two observations I have A, I think when it comes to as communicators we have this this immediate need to respond when crisis is received whereas when you're looking at communication from a public policy standpoint on a regular issue hold on it's more about measured it's not about responding in the next one hour to hour and I call myself the speed breaker when it comes to dealing with times of crisis issue because I'm like let's talk things, consult and then we talk about the strategy the other thing which from a larger social media ecosystem and collaboration point of view we have to be very clear of when we are looking at any campaigns is the outcome to get twitter impression or I want to make a policy thing I see a lot of clients also getting caught by the lure of having a particular say trend on a social media which will have very little impact on the outcome they seek on the policy front. So one has to be very clear that what is this that I will achieve out of out of this whether it's on a social media or whether it's on a traditional media. I think good point Rahul and Rahul and believe they are working in this space where they help clients with big policies. I just want to add one more besides social media is third party endorsement in case we can get some outsiders highly credible independent people to write on our Bihar Khan media that really helps that really helps our cause. I would add another you know layer of complexity to the whole process. Today we are not just dealing with the government, we are also dealing with the judiciary and they are taking control of what the government should be doing and we see that you know the court actions are deciding what is to be done including you know some of the bills which have recently gone through. In fact the issue is a great example of how government has to really lean on the power of the courts to do what they actually want to do. So you need to step up and I think when it comes to judiciary it's a very different kind of mechanism that you probably some of the strategies may not really work. So you need to kind of you know work at different level. You need to probably put the voices out of the people on the ground because that I think the public interest really becomes everything as a most significant. So you know the public interest litigation and all those things become very very useful methods which I think people desire to. So those are some of the examples here. We have still time left so maybe we can take one or two questions anyone has any questions or I'll just summarize basically definitely at least from the views I've got from the panelists there is a future for communications in public policy whether it is a lead role whether how we actually collaborate to make it a lead role is something that depends on upstilling depends on actually you all people who are sitting here. So I'll leave it there thank you so very much. Latika announced a vacancy with her in public affairs yeah you announced a vacancy in your team for public affairs and everybody wants to thank you thank you everyone. Thank you