The time was fixed – at precisely 4 pm, from Monday to Saturday.
The gentleman would stride into his office at Shastri Bhawan and greet a crowd of reporters. He would narrate key announcements on behalf of the Union Government, field a few media questions, and cordially duck some others.
This was an on-the-record media briefing that Principal Information Officer, or chief spokesman of the Union Government, I Ramamohan Rao did for about seven years – from 1985 to 1992.
An Indian Information Service officer, Rao had the distinction of serving as media adviser to four prime ministers - Rajiv Gandhi, V. P. Singh, Chandrashekar, and P. V. Narasimha Rao. He also worked as media advisor to the Governor of militancy-hit Jammu and Kashmir from 1994 to 1996, when the state was under the Governor’s Rule.
A rare information warrior who brought grace to the art of public relations, media engagement and narrative setting, Rao would be shocked to see a new trend that is emerging today with some top states employing a completely new paradigm in manning the information domain.
The trend showcases the appetite for giving the critical information management role to senior Indian Police Service officers in what many call the securitisation of the narrative. In this new world, the state's pivot to the IPS is a logical, albeit chilling, evolution.
What has changed in recent times is the role played by the information unit in shaping the political agenda, as also burnishing the image of the politician running the state. This means goodbye to the traditional approach of the Directorate General of Information and Public Relations units in states being steered by an IAS officer, or a career public relations professional.
Today, we live in a fiercely competitive information age in a borderless world where access has got democratised, and the role of the intermediary is under stress. With trigger-happy social citizens connected 24/7, the old communication order has undergone a big change. In big states, each information unit hosts a high-tech war room equipped with social media monitors, real-time sentiment analysis, and rapid response units.
To navigate this shifting, highly-volatile spectre, some state governments have abandoned the consensus-driven IAS bureaucrat, instead giving preference to the tactical IPS officer. From Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh until recently, to Maharashtra and Karnataka, the transition of information management into the hands of senior police officers is a structural truth. The trend brings with it an additional nuance: often, the role of the information custodian is integrated with that of the core digital policing unit, which monitors the digital highway.
This is a new era of political communication, and we notice a consensus among primary political formations running various levels of governments. It represents the transition of state information from a tool of public development outreach, to a weaponised asset of national security. The argument for placing a senior cop in the information vertical lies in how the digital ecosystem has evolved. The policing argument is being justified on account of necessary technological literacy, intelligence integration, and rapid crisis-management in times of the chaotic internet space.
The Indian digital highway has expanded at breakneck speed, yet remains critically devoid of sufficient regulatory guardrails. In an era dominated by synthetic media, coordinated bot networks, algorithmic manipulation, and weaponised deep fakes, information is no longer just "news"—it is a potential trigger for law-and-order crises.
IIS to IAS to IPS
IIS traditionally runs the central information units in the Union capital and in states, while historically IAS officers have been the preferred choice across states to be the official spokesperson for the government. An IAS officer's training was centred around policy formulation and developmental negotiation. However, when a manipulated video or a piece of synthetic content goes viral, threatening to trigger communal tension or civil unrest, the state cannot afford a committee-style bureaucratic response. It needs command-and-control, and this is where the IPS utility has been underscored.
An IPS officer is specifically trained in rapid crisis management, threat mitigation, and real-time operations. Under this “policing” perspective, the state’s communication apparatus shifts from a posture of passive dissemination to one of aggressive, proactive defence. But the need to be on top of the information flow at times also brings into play the undue need to check the flow from a source and narrative perspective. This is tricky terrain.
Fact-Check Units
With social media being a mirror of the citizen mood, the policing mind set has brought in the creation of state-level Fact-Check Units , often placed directly under the purview of tech-savvy IPS officers. The official mandate for these units is simple: to identify, flag, and neutralise misinformation or "fake news" targeting the state government.
Under Maharashtra’s Brijesh Singh—who concurrently led the state’s Cyber Cell—information dissemination and cyber-intelligence were structurally fused. Similarly, in Karnataka, the assignment of IPS officers like Hemant Nimbalkar, who held dual charge in Intelligence and Public Relations, and more recently, M.N. Anucheth, also an IPS officer with an overview of cyber security, demonstrates how governments are actively tracking the digital footprint of narrative dissent.
By linking the PR machinery with state intelligence, the government creates a highly potent, closed-loop system: intelligence identifies a burgeoning negative narrative, the FCU officially flags it as misleading, the Information Department deploys targeted counter-messaging, and the threat of enforcement under cyber-crime laws looms over bad actors.
Global Genesis and The Legal Framework
Globally, however, the shift toward securitised narrative policing is accelerating. In the United States, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)—part of the Department of Homeland Security—famously expanded its mandate to protect America’s "cognitive infrastructure," flagging social media content to tech platforms. In the UK, the battle against deepfakes is being led not by press secretaries, but by the Home Office and cyber-forensics units.
While this synergistic, security-led model offers governments an efficient tool for crisis control, it runs the risk of running into the wall of constitutional scrutiny. The lack of guardrails on the digital highway cuts both ways; while it allows bad actors to manipulate public sentiment, it also permits the state to arbitrarily police speech.
This strain reached a boiling point when the Bombay High Court struck down the Union Government’s IT Amendment Rules, which sought to establish a statutory FCU under the Press Information Bureau.
The transformation of public relations into an enforcement-led surveillance apparatus risks turning the state’s digital highway into a heavily policed toll road, but at the same time, offering real time information management in crises. But, the need to have legal checks and balances is paramount.
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