Scene Two: A rough-and-ready platform is prepared for Major General Mohinder Puri who is commanding troops in Drass. The seasoned Puri gives details on the areas recaptured by the Indian army since Operation Vijay began. He is flooded with questions. The group then breaks up to examine the weapons captured from Pakistani army intruders.

Scene Three: Inside the makeshift workshop of the electrical and mechanical engineers corps in Kargil, an army officer requests the group of visiting mediapersons to fall flat on the ground if they hear a sharp hissing sound as thisindicates Pakistani shelling. As he turns around, the sound is heard. The journalists hit the ground together like well-trained soldiers. They had to repeat the exercise five times during the 30-minute briefing.

Welcome to Kargil. Or, more importantly, welcome, courtesy the Indian army, to a war zone on the world's rooftop. The mood is sombre and grim. The army has fought hard and lost men. But on the front, the Indian army has learnt an important lesson. It has learnt the importance of getting its PR act together for the global consumption.

Not only is the global community getting a glimpse of the difficult terrain in Kargil, it is also learning of the restraint used by the Indian army in keeping to its side of the LoC. To top this, the world is getting to observe the Indian army's firepower, the valour of its soldiers and the leadership of its generals. The army is conducting its PR exercise via the Indian and foreign media, applying the same discipline to this exercise which it applies to fighting awar.

Since June 21, the Indian army has organised six media tours of the war zone. Each tour had around 50 media representatives on board. The army felt the keen interest from domestic and international quarters in the Kargil war on the very first trip that it conducted. It had to accommodate five bus loads of 94 mediapersons, 25 of them from foreign media organisations. However, the new openness did not come to the Indian army without some introspection and rethinking in the highest quarters. The army also learnt its lessons from its initial mistake in dealing with the Kargil conflict.

When news of the conflict started trickling in from mid-May, the army clamped down on the media. The strict brief to all army officers posted in Jammu and Kashmir: Don't talk to the press, on-the-record or unofficially. The official silence had an immediate repercussion. Rumour mills started grinding and exaggerated reports of the `defeat' of the Indian forces at the hands of the Pakistanis appeared. Also, in the absenceof facts and figures, speculation was rife that India had lost more land than it could afford to win back from the enemy.

``Keeping quiet on the conflict was a mistake. We needed to get the message across that we are fighting a war forced upon us, with courage and restraint,'' admitted an army officer. Though a slow-moving giant otherwise, the army reacted quickly. Instructions arrived from the army headquarters in Delhi, directing senior officers posted in the crucial Drass and Batalik sub-sectors to prepare for questions from the media. Questions, even inconvenient ones, were to be faced and answered, not ducked or avoided. On May 25, the Indian army permitted the first official media coverage of the Kargil war. However, this could only continue till the first week of June when the war turned bloodier and nastier. As the Indian army suffered heavy casualties, it realised that intrusive cameras could give away gun position to the enemy. And again a clamp down was reinforced until June 20. The armyconducted trips are successfully projecting the Indian position. Says the correspondent of Yomiuri Shimbun, a Japanese daily, on the trip: ``The line of thinking of the Indian authorities has come across in the Kargil war, influencing international opinion. Also, I have seen, for the first time, the tough terrain which is a key to this grim war. And the shelling reminds me of Afghanistan.'' The Tokyo Broadcasting System reporter, who is with a 2-member camera crew, agrees with him. The army has not only given considerable leeway to its men to talk, it's laying open its arms and ammunition for the inspection, too. Along the national highway 1A connecting Srinagar to Leh, mediapersons are invited to demonstration of Bofors Howitzer guns, which have proved their complete effectiveness in the Kargil war.