Official Communication by Defencepr in Kargil War and Beyond

Abstract

Official communication gained significance with the evolution of the Public Relations Department of the Ministry of Defence in India, from being run by the British Army officers to having become a part of the civilian bureaucracy headed by a Director General. He is an officer of the Indian Information Service, with a team of PROs who are from the same service and some officers of the three forces and other defence establishments
Within themselves the military and the public relations officials decide both the news gathering and news making process and this is then passed on to the press officially, which releases it to the public through the various media. Give the public what they must have, is the theory on which the DPR works and the press helps in the dissemination of this information. 
Public relations and journalism are two sides of the same coin in defence journalism. Keeping in view the convolutions in the flow of information within the official structure of DPR it becomes imperative to explore the disbursement of information by DPR to the media through its own channels, like the Press Information Bureau, e-mails sent and press releases distributed to the various media organisations.
In this study the researcher has tracked the disbursement of news by DPR from 1999 to 2008, a period of ten years starting from the Kargil War.  
Key terms :Official Communication, Defence PR , Kargil War and Beyond and Directorate of Public relations, Ministry of Defence, Government of India