Strategic and Tactical negotiations: Need of the hour

In the midst of numerous crises, many to do with corrupt practices and mis- governance, some of you may not have noted a report on the advice offered by Home Minister P Chidambaram to the Orissa Chief Minister, Naveen Patnaik recently on hostage negotiations.

Readers would recall that the popular district collector Vineel Krishna who was abducted recently, was released by his Maoist captors after the Orissa government agreed to all their demands. Chidambaram alluded to the government policy of not surrendering to the demands of terrorists and outlawed organisations that use kidnapping or abduction as weapons to negotiate the release of their high profile colleagues locked up in jails. The Orissa government paid no heed to this advice and acted as they considered appropriate.

Why was the Orissa government so blasé about such a serious piece of advice? One can infer that some were due to historic reasons and others, unfortunately, to the non-professional approach to governance. The case of Rubaiya Sayeed who was abducted by JKLF, the infamous case of hijack of Indian Airlines flight IC 814 to Kandahar, the demands of Veerappan – the famous dacoit – have all ended in the capitulation of our authorities to unlawful and illegitimate demands.

What would a group of professionals have done after each of these incidents? Firstly they would have carried out a quick appreciation of the situation, assessed the pros and cons of possible courses of action and evaluated the ‘Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement’. These are basic steps in negotiations of any kind. Hostage negotiations are best left to trained professionals. Mere position of authority does not equip any person to conduct negotiations.

Yet there are neither trained professionals readily available for negotiations nor are lessons learnt compiled and disseminated as guidelines for future. Countries who aspire to play an active role in regional or higher levels of geopolitics, are expected to gear up at multiple levels to negotiate with state and non-state actors. Whether we were successful in negotiating with Pakistan at Shimla and later at Lahore and even in Agra is a subject which has been partially debated. Not much has appeared in the public domain about our negotiations with those who hijacked IC 814 and numerous other hostage related crises. They are likely to continue to remain state secrets for decades to come. Thus, we cannot even analyse the negotiation skills employed.

Negotiation is a subject which is treated with scant respect even in our recognised academic instituitions. Most cover the subject as a pro forma activity. There are but a handful of experts who are qualified through a rigorous academic content suitably supported with gaming as an integral part. More importantly, they would have experience with only a few live cases where negotiation skills were employed. Hence this subject ought not to be taught by those who merely learn it from books. Strategic negotiators in USA and the erstwhile Soviet Union were experts who served their respective countries for decades. They could read each other’s minds and intentions. Hostage negotiators in the USA are often free lancers who may not necessarily be employees of police or other authorities but are on call to attend to emergencies. Quite clearly expertise of this nature is a necessity for countries whose international profile demands appropriate response to crisis.

One of the solutions to address this serious lacuna is to create expertise with senior police and civil servants, both at the centre and in states. Courses need to be conducted in India using either the business school route and/or training facilities of repute with the armed forces and other para-military forces.

Negotiations per se is a complex subject. While the academic back drop for the theory of negotiations can be combined for all trainees, areas of hostage crisis, hi jacking and strategic negotiations are specialised and need careful structuring and gaming of complex situations. More over the process of gaming needs to be carefully evaluated by experts. Hubs of expertise on strategic negotiations exist in reputed institutions in the West. Actual proceedings of negotiations are available on audio tapes and carefully culled printed material so that the trainee gets the feel of pulls and pressures of live negotiations.

It is likely that many of our senior civil servants, corporate leaders and men in uniform feel that they are equipped to deal with all types of negotiations. It is time that they exposed their ‘acquired’ knowledge to a real- time situation through gaming. Moreover, we need to cultivate a culture of recording, preserving and disseminating knowledge by meticulously documenting our findings for posterity.
The corporate sector needs these skills in equal measure. Here again it is difficult to find case files on negotiation which negotiators can refer to. Careful documentation of proceedings is a mandatory part of negotiations.

If we want to enter the big league, we need to prepare ourselves. It is better late than never. 

Vice Admiral Bangara was the former C-IN-C of the Southern Naval Command He is presently Vice President of the Professionals Party Of India

(The views expressed in the article are that of the author and do not represent the views of the editorial committee or the centre for land warfare studies)