Smiling with a stiff upper lip

Alpana Killawala's book gives us a reality check and puts the role of communication at the Reserve Bank of India, along with people specialising in the function, into perspective

A Fly on the RBI Wall: An Insider’s View of the Central Bank

Author: Alpana Killawala

Publisher: Rupa

Pages: 232

Price: Rs 595

Alpana Killawala was a familiar name for years for anybody who followed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). There were an endless number of press releases signed off by Killawala appearing on the RBI website. While the Governor was the face of the institution, Ms Killawala was the name associated with the organisation! She brought us the good, the bad and the pedantic releases with a regularity that was difficult to ignore.

The function of communication is especially important in an institution like RBI. Anything that the organisation says could move the markets and cause bloodshed and therefore the role of someone in charge of communication should be overly critical to the organisation. There is a common trait with senior executives from RBI: None of them speak without a prepared script; none of them give you a write up, unless they recheck the text multiple times over. I have also been a beneficiary when I send something to them, the feedback is not only on the substance of the argument, but also the form! Therefore, one would think that someone in charge of communication in the organisation would be not only a super-critical resource, but also extremely powerful.

Ms Killawala’s book gives us a reality check on the assumptions and puts the role of communication and people specialising in the function in perspective. It obviously is frustrating for someone who has direct access to the top management—  who would want to get things done at any cost — but must report multiple layers below in the bureaucracy to navigate the space. Ms Killawala learns this lesson early in her career. She must constantly keep making space for herself while she is low down in the hierarchy and at the same time not to be throwing her weight around indicating access to the top. This leads to multiple situations where the top has orally communicated a task, but the in-between layer raises a red flag and obstructs the process, not necessarily because of egos but because of the way in which someone reads the situation.

Ms Killawala writes lucidly. That is an understatement for a person who has specialised in communication throughout her career. What is interesting is the way in which she has structured the book. Instead of using a straightforward chronology to narrate her journey, she has broken up her experiences into chapters that represent a particular leadership style at the top and goes through her narrative Governor by Governor. By doing so, she also shows the difficulties of her career. not in terms of hierarchical movement, but in terms of criticality of functioning.  Starting with S Venkitaramanan, who was instrumental in creating her job profile and underscoring the importance of communication, followed by C Rangarajan, who looked at the function as instrumental, Bimal Jalan, who started shy but actually started enjoying the interaction with the media, Y V Reddy, who spoke in riddles and played footsie with the media, D Subbarao, who understood the critical function of communication and submitted himself to preparation and scrutiny, and Raghuram Rajan, who was to be protected from his informal and egalitarian American self. She ends with Urjit Patel, who forms a small part of the epilogue. This style of leadership-driven chapterisation highlights how some support departments in a critical organisation like the RBI could move to the core and periphery depending on how the leadership sees the function.

One imagines that an institution like RBI could be boring, laid back and worried only about getting its word out. One would not imagine the RBI trying actively to shape a discourse — by managing the timing of press conferences, the technical briefing to pre-empt the direction of the discourse; actively leaking information to get a market reaction and even “lobbying.” However, this book breaks the myth and tells us that — irrespective of the staid and stoic nature of the organisation, it still needs to have multiple strategies to get its message out.

One of the most fascinating anecdotes in the book is about Raghuram Rajan —who became a governor fairly young and was welcomed by socialite author Shobhaa De as a James Bond who added sex to Sensex. One would have thought that this sort of comment was a flash in the pan, and nobody would take it seriously. No, not true. Ms De’s characterisation was seen as important enough to be addressed: Resulting in the communication department releasing only photographs of Mr Rajan with his reading glasses (possibly ensuring that he looked much older than he was!).

The book is a delight to read and works at multiple levels  — it brings out the complexity and criticality of the communication function in a highly technical organisation that affects the common person daily. It serves as a guidebook for people in the communication profession on how to hand over messages; for lay readers, it offers an interesting vantage point of the history of RBI. It is interesting to note that the role of the communications department was minimised, restricting its external interface, particularly with the media. It was not a comprehensive resource department for all communication needs, including editing of technical papers, drafting of annual reports, and writing the history of the organisation. Ms Killawala’s aspiration to have had greater excitement in aspects beyond media management was valid. She is not bitter about it, while she makes the point.

I am curious to know why Urjit Patel did not deserve a chapter and was just a part of the epilogue. Possibly because she was talking about the last two years of her career. The highlight of that period was the firefighting with the communication relating to demonetisation. Or possibly because Mr Patel himself was inaccessible to the department unlike the other Governors. One can only guess.

mssriram@pm.me. The reviewer is a professor with Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of Management, Bengaluru