A few years ago, I wrote and article about how much money the government spends on dead leaders to publicise itself before the elections. But seeing the beaming Prime Minister in one or the other ad everyday in a newspapers, I wondered if those days were a drop in the ocean.
First some background… Almost by coincidence the current Prime Minister was elected a few days after an expert committee set up by the Supreme Court of India recommended guidelines for publication of government advertisements to avoid the misuse of public funds for plugging the ruling party and glorifying its politicians. A year later, the Apex Court allowed the use of photographs of only three dignitaries -the President, Prime Minister and the Chief Justice of India – in government ads. Stating that the publication of government ads carrying photographs have the potential of promoting “a personality cult and the image of one or a few individuals which is a direct antithesis of democratic functioning”, the court said, it left it to the better judgment of the three luminaries whether their pictures should be carried on ads paid for by public funds. It went soft on its stand a years later,and allowed the publication of pictures of Union Ministers of concerned departments, Chief Ministers, Governors and State Ministers of the concerned departments. But, the damage was done by then. The publicity hungry and PR savvy Prime Minister latched onto the second ruling. In pretty much all the government ads, we see the picture of a smiling Prime Minister and rarely that of the minister concerned (central or state).
The sheer scale of publicity that the Government spending on ads is mind boggling. A Right to Information (RTI) query revealed that the central government spent over Rs 1,100 crore in two-and-a-half years on advertisements featuring the Prime Minister and this was on ‘telecast/television, Internet and other electronic media’ and does not include other platforms like print ads, hoardings, posters, booklets and calendars. I headed to the good old DAVP site to look for data on print ads as I had a hunch that the government spending on this far outweighed broadcast media.
And here is a glimpse of print “Display ads” which are very likely to have a beaming Prime Minister on them.
- Overall Spends: While the ad spend on 2014 was lower than 2013 by 14%, it rose by 29% in 2015 (the first full year of the current government) and by 11% in 2016. More importantly, since the new government came into power (on 26 May 2014), it has spend about Rs.738.98 Crore (in a total of 1025 days). In the same number of days leading up to 26 May 2014 (i.e. from 2 Aug 2011), the prior government has spent Rs. 594.10 Cr. So, in effect the new government spend 24% more in the same period.
- Ad spends by various Ministries (1025 days – pre and current): The top 5 spending ministries are expected. Even the previous government spent the most on those ministries. But what is interesting is the top 4 of these 5 saw spends grow more than the national average. The Finance ministry spent 51% more than the previous government in a similar period, the IB ministry 36% more and the Health and Family Welfare ministry 29% more. What is interesting is Defense saw a 120% growth, Tourism saw 81% growth and Power saw 195% growth in spends. Then a separate head called ‘People Oriented Schemes’ cropped up with Rs.24 cr cumulative spends so far.
- The ministries which saw huge spend drops (1025 days – pre and current): The other interesting thing is where spends have dropped vs previous government. While the smaller spenders like RBI etc., don’t matter, what is interesting is the huge declines in Women & Child welfare, Minority affairs, Rural Development and Human Resource Development. I would assume the ad spends is a proxy of the good work being done and new schemes being developed by the various government departments and declines in it aren’t a good sign. Even if I add spends on ‘People Oriented Schemes’ to these 4 departments, the overall ad spends are down 20% for these ministries.
I couldn’t help but draw parallels between these spends versus spends during the ‘India Shining‘ campaign (~Rs.150 crore ad spends) in the previous NDA regime and the ‘Bharat Nirman‘ (~Rs.200 crore ad spends). These were essentially poll campaigns (mind you, some of these ad spends are captured above) . But looking at how big Mr. Prime Minister is in these ‘regular’ ads, I would consider them to be in the same league too. Sample ads below.
And now that I have compared these ads to the poll campaigns, let me highlight the problem. Critics of India Shining campaign mostly agreed that the blitz crashed because of its “lopsided” focus on urban growth story while neglecting the distress and backwardness of the rural landscape. Which is what seems to be happening now as well.
The data can be downloaded here or you can head to DAVPs page and download latest data.
