Inside the Centre’s huddle on information warfare

BEHIND closed doors at Sushma Swaraj Bhawan last week, some of the country’s top bureaucrats gathered for what insiders described as a “crucial and unusually candid” discussion.

- SUMIT KUMAR SINGH @NewDelhi

The task before them: to draw up a coordinated strategy against ‘misinformation’ — the new battlefield where foreign entities are said to be targeting India.

The daylong meeting on October 25 brought together all Union government secretaries. It was chaired by the Prime Minister’s Principal Secretaries, P K Mishra and Shaktikanta Das, along with Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan and Information and Broadcasting Secretary Sanjay Jaju. The objective, according to officials, was to ensure that every ministry speaks in one voice and that communication reflects what they called a “whole-of-government and whole-of-society” approach.

A messaging rethink