Draught of hardcore PR courses in India

As mentioned in my earlier post for any industry to grow the people entering it should be qualified enough and have the skill set required for the industry. When it comes to Public Relations (PR) in India there seems to be a draught in the number of courses available. Many colleges in India have started courses in PR but they are mostly post graduation diploma courses except the one offered by Mumbai University, Kalina Campus which is a proper Masters in Public Relations (MAPR).

Many people who are already in the industry are of the opinion that to be successful in PR one just has to be a people’s person, I personally do not agree completely with this. Agreed being a people’s person is one of the most important traits one should’ve to succeed in PR but that is not the only thing. To ensure the prospective entrants of the industry do not have the same line of thinking and have a global view of the industry with respect to how it functions, where it’s headed to, what more is left to explore in it, we need courses that do not just talk about media relations when it comes to PR but we need courses like Masters in Public Relations (MAPR).The course offered by  Mumbai University, Kalina Campus delves deep into the history of Public Relations and also tries to make its students develop a mindset where they don’t just want to be another person working in the industry but actually want to change the field in their own unique way. In short the course tries to build Thought Leaders.

With an increase in the number of students opting for mass media courses nowadays, the awareness level about Public Relations as a field has also gone up, a good omen indeed, but then again just the student being aware of something is not everything. Unless and until a course or field is well known, parents don’t usually take a liking to the course their ward has chosen and try to convince their kid to give it a second thought and consider some other career choice which if not the parents themselves but at least their office buddies have heard of and approved off. For this to happen, the industry needs to do a little bit of PR for itself. The first step in the PR campaign for PR would be to convince other universities need to take a leaf out of Mumbai University’s book and give a serious thought to a Masters in Public Relations (MAPR) as a potential course in their curricula. Let’s see how the elders in the community (PR) take to this suggestion by a youngling like me.

Public Relations going through adolescence in India

Even though the first dedicated department or agency for public relations (PR) in India was started in the 1940s by the Tata group, PR as an industry still finds itself in an adolescent stage in India. It’s said that PR in India started evolving as an industry in the 1990s, even after almost two decades it seems that the industry or rather the agencies in India have a long way to go before they can compete with the agencies across the globe.

So, instead of getting too much into the history of the sector in India let’s directly jump to where the industry finds itself today. ASSOCHAM has given an estimate that there’re roundabout 1000-2000 agencies in India which boasts of a manpower of almost 30,000-40,000 employees in all. Sounds like a good set of numbers doesn’t it?  But as the cliché goes numbers usually don’t tell the whole story, the same applies here.

For most of the people working in the industry in India PR is just media relations, which in a way has resulted in the slow growth of the sector. Though the silver lining here is that the professionals and the agencies have opened their eyes to the fact that PR isn’t just about co-ordinating between the clients be it your corporates or individual and the media. One of the reasons for this change of attitude of the agencies is the awareness level going up amongst the clients and the advent of new media like social networking sites has made companies and individuals to go full throttle on building and enhancing their brand image. As people have accepted that PR isn’t just about media relations the growth prospects of the industry has increased manifold.

If we go back to some of the statistics it’s found that the industry is growing at an annual rate of 32%, which is a piece of statistic to be proud of. It’s this growth rate which has made many International PR companies/agencies to look at India as a goldmine ready to be exploited. To reiterate this point it can be observed that many big agencies in India have been taken over by the Big Boys of the west, for e.g. Hanmer & Partners acquired by Publicis Groupe and Ketchum acquiring Sampark PR. So does this trend of acquisitions by foreign companies spell doom for the Indian agencies, maybe or maybe not, let’s dedicate a separate post for this.

Moving forward, for any industry to grow the people entering the industry have to be well qualified and apt for the profession, when it comes to PR the people entering at the executive level are either graduates or post graduate diploma holders who’ve done their studies in fields which had nothing about PR in their curriculum. Thus, giving the entrants a myopic view of the industry, this in turn hampers their growth as a professional and the growth of the industry as well. So, if PR has to grow at a much more rapid pace in India, the education system of the country has to look at it in a big way because just post graduate diploma courses teaching the students about how to write a press release won’t help neither the students nor the industry.

Not to make my first post a drag let me stop here and keep the other points that need some discussion for another time.