{"id":1950,"date":"2017-06-01T19:00:16","date_gmt":"2017-06-01T13:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/?p=1950"},"modified":"2017-08-01T17:22:34","modified_gmt":"2017-08-01T11:52:34","slug":"a-beaming-pm-on-every-ad-by-the-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/a-beaming-pm-on-every-ad-by-the-government\/","title":{"rendered":"A beaming PM, on every ad by the government!"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, I wrote and article about how much money the government spends on dead leaders to publicise itself<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> -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 \u201ca personality cult and the image of one or a few individuals which is a direct antithesis of democratic functioning\u201d, 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<\/a> 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).<\/p>\n

The sheer scale of publicity that the Government spending on ads is mind boggling.\u00a0 A Right to Information (RTI) query revealed that the central government spent over Rs 1,100 crore<\/a> 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. <\/span>I headed to the good old DAVP<\/a> site to look for data on print ads as I had a hunch that the government spending on this far outweighed broadcast media.<\/p>\n

And here is a glimpse of print “Display ads<\/strong><\/span>” which are very likely to have a beaming Prime Minister on them.<\/p>\n