In terms of the Government orders of December 8, 2017, all regional offices and field units of DAVP, DFP and S&DD will be subsumed in the 22 Regional Offices and 147 Field units. Accordingly, S&DD and DAVP will close their existing regional and field units. The integrated regional units will be renamed as Regional Outreach Bureaus (ROBs). The Additional Director General (ADG) (Region) will control the ROBs concerned.

Government decision stipulates renaming all the 147 Field units as Field Outreach Bureaus (FOBs) with a designated head of each FOB as the Controlling Officer. ADG (Region) will designate the head of the respective FOBs.

In the scheme of the NDA Government, existing media outreach programmes under Development of Communication and Information Dissemination (DCID) and Media Infrastructure Development Programme (MIDP) will be continued under different budgetary heads of the three Media Units as separate Division each. Umbrella organization of BOC at the apex will decide publicity programme and all financial proposals under the integrated structure.

A committee comprising Additional Secretary & Financial Adviser, Director General (DAVP) and Joint Secretary (Policy & Administration) in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting will oversee fructification of the new set up within six months.

Decision to set up Bureau of Outreach and Communication at the apex as a holding organization of Regional Outreach Bureau and Field Outreach Bureau is farcical as it is old wine in new bottle and futile given the acute shortages of manpower and all such outfits being truncated and moribund. All the works in the so called regional and branch offices are outsourced to persons with connections to Sangh Pariwar with no sense of belonging to the Government, with poor professional ability to deliver on the ground. This also follows recent orders of the Government to post DGs and ADGs largely to man ROBs and FOBs, a job heretofore performed mostly by Group B officials of Indian Information Service or in some cases by entry level Group A officials. What a downfall of the Service cadre?

Present breed of self serving ADGs and DGs with little interest in developing media professional competence or nil competence with thoroughly unmotivated and disintensivised indoctrinated outsourced personnel at their disposal can hardly connect with the media at the grass roots level, so much for reaching out to the people.

All the media units of the Union Government are sick with acute shortages of information personnel resulting in poor delivery on the ground. Even AIR News and Door Darshan News services are outsourced to RSS affiliated outfits with its CEO as staunch Sanghi. Press Information Bureau (PIB) is somehow tottering with all its regional/branch offices being sick and outsourced.

With main stream print and electronic media regimented with their owners arm twisted to toe NDA Government line, journalists therein kept on tenterhook, with no scrutiny of Government and the social media ruling the roost in generating negative sentiments, rationalization or recasting official media outreach appears to be a mere paper work with no meaningful measure to deliver!