Worlds apart or a part of the world? Public relations issues and challenges in India

Please cite this article in press as: Patwardhan, P., & Bardhan, N. Worlds apart or a part of the world? Public relations

issues and challenges in India. Public Relations Review (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2014.01.001

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PUBREL-1233; No. of Pages12

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Public Relations Review

Worlds apart or a part of the world? Public relations issues

and challenges in India

Padmini Patwardhana,∗, Nilanjana Bardhanb

a Department of Mass Communication, Winthrop University, 214 Johnson Hall, Rock Hill, SC 29733, USA b Department of Speech Communication, Southern Illinois University – Carbondale, 1100 Lincoln Drive, MC 6605, Carbondale,

IL 62901-6605, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 9 October 2013

Accepted 4 January 2014

Keywords:

Public relations

Global

India

Industry issues

a b s t r a c t

This study examines modern public relations in India investigating current issues, trends

and leadership in communication management. Using a survey of Indian practitioners,

it compares public relations in India with global trends. Findings suggest that practice

in India is interdependent and changing dynamically with global influences, though a

global–local dialectic is clearly present. Country-level differences are evident with devel￾opment of human capital seen as the top issue in the region. At the same time, similar to

other countries, the industry in India is also dealing with issues of digitization and infor￾mation flow, struggling with measurement concerns, and trying to stay on top of crisis

management preparedness.

© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

In recent years, the confluence of economic, professional and global factors have contributed to substantial growth in

the public relations industry in India. According to recent reports, prospects are bright with the industry slated to grow

upwards of 20% in 2013. In addition, an overwhelming optimism regarding the future of public relations is evident among

practitioners in India (“Understanding the Public Relations Industry. . .,” 2012; “Inside the Industry’s Mind and the 2013

Outlook. . .,” 2013). This optimism has often been attributed to the changing role of public relations in post liberalization

India. As the private sector has exploded in a period of economic deregulation, a shiftto public relations as a key management

function is more evident (Bardhan & Sriramesh, 2006). On the agency side as well, the arrival of major global public relations

firms looking to provide systematic consultancy has led to a gradual change from the media relations approach of Indian

public relations to a more data-driven, stakeholder focused activity (Dharmakumar, 2011).

Growth and change, however, pose their own challenges, particularly in a transitioning environment. Due to the speeding

up of market globalization in the 1990s, and despite enthusiastic projections for the growth of the industry, countries such

as India have the additional challenge of being relative newcomers to the global industry. There is little doubt that practice

and thinking in India are still a blend of the old and the new. A mix of diverse styles and activities prevails (Bardhan &

Patwardhan, 2014) with a market globalization philosophy co-existing somewhat uneasily with more traditional approaches

driven largely by the public sector (Bardhan & Sriramesh, 2006).

This research is one of the few scholarly industry surveys of Indian public relations practitioners in the country’s post

economic liberalization period and the only one that compares the industry with global trends. It is part of a global public

relations project sponsored by The Plank Center for Leadership in Public Relations at the University of Alabama. The cross

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 803 323 4526.

E-mail address: patwardhanp@winthrop.edu (P. Patwardhan).

0363-8111/$ – see front matter © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2014.01.001