dna edit: Bharat Nirman, an old BJP story

The similarities are too obvious to miss. The first batch of Bharat Nirman campaigns sponsored by UPA II, released on Tuesday, reminds one of BJP’s India Shining propaganda blitz before the 2004 elections. Like the BJP, the Congress too is trying to exploit the aspirations of the middle class.

The message is simple: the government has done its bit to further the dreams of a nation by providing education, infrastructure, means of transportation such as the metro rail, mobile connectivity, and sundry other things. Sample this: A girl from a remote village becomes a hot-shot entrepreneur, thanks to a humane government which has encouraged her progress with midday meals, scholarships and IITs. 

The BJP too sang the same tune, dwelt on a similar list of achievements, albeit through a different look-and-feel template. It had convinced us that it was coming to power for the second term. But while the saffron party lost the elections because it concentrated way too much on the middle class and left the agrarian poor in the lurch, the UPA seems confident of governing the country for the third time. For that, its also banking on ads aimed at rural India. 

Even though a lot of money went into producing the commercials — allegedly Rs16 crore — which have been directed by filmmaker Pradip Sarkar, they still look like a ‘sarkari’ effort to reach out. The government, of course, is at pains to point out that unlike India Shining, these commercials are a fact-sheet, listing the achievements of the UPA II.

The BJP, not to be outdone, has been critical of a commercial, which said “Thanks to MGNREGA, no bonded labour anymore. It tries to demolish UPA’s claim with the fact that bonded labour had been abolished by a 1976 Act, long before the MGNREGA saw the light of the day. 

In a country as vast and complex as  India, advertisements, TV commercials at that, have a limited role to play in garnering votes. It remains to be seen what dividends the UPA gains from this extravagant exercise.