Outreach campaign: Private players to spread the government word across four states

Private agencies, tasked with publicising the government's flagship programmes, will begin a massive multimedia outreach campaign from next month in 20,000 villages spread across four states, including poll-bound Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.

Though the plan to rope in private agencies instead of just banking on government departments had been under consideration for a while, the government has now fine-tuned its strategy. The three-month campaign, focusing on local youth, women and farmers, will also cover Karnataka and Odisha (besides Uttar Pradesh and Punjab where elections will be held early next year) and go on from October 1 to December 31.

Selected agencies will be designing and implementing the "360 degree rural communication project" in the rural areas of the four states, sources told dna.

The Information and Broadcasting (I&B) ministry has already floated an expression of interest (EOI) detailing the scope of work and the requirement for the agencies.

According to the guidelines, sources said, shortlisted agency/agencies will have to implement a creative rural communication strategy in local languages across 5,000 villages in each of the four states, especially in "media dark areas where the human development indices are low".

"The communication strategy and the plan for the agency(ies) will be integrated with the overall communication strategy of the Government of India," the document states.

They will have to formulate an innovative, interactive communication programme, which will also use digital technology and mobile telephony. Organising events such as school rallies, quiz shows, sports and other competitions and felicitating local achievers and role models in the area will also be part of the package. Local community leaders, farmers, women, youth and students will be mobilised.

A strong monitoring and reporting mechanism will be put in place to gauge the success of the programmes implemented by them, an official said.

In fact, the ministry can also hire an independent impact evaluation agency to assess the impact of the project.

Only those agencies which are profit making and have an annual turnover of Rs.30 crore are allowed to send in their applications to the ministry. Besides, they should have experience of covering 5,000 villages within a single state in a single project in the last three years.

So far, the job of publicising the central government's direct communication campaigns – particularly flagship schemes like Jan Dhan Yojana, Swachh Bharat, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and Indradhanush – have been carried out by the Directorate of Field Publicity (DFP), the Song & Drama Division (S&DD) and the Field Exhibition Wing of the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) under the I&B ministry.

However, DFP has been unable to cover all the rural areas in the country and the money spent wasn't reflecting in the work, government sources admitted.

"Moreover, hiring a third party to publicize government campaigns would lend added credibility to the message," an official said.

There has been some consternation over the move with officials saying that government units were being undermined.

"However, as with other instances of privatization, it wouldn't be surprising if the agencies completely take over the primary role of media units under the I&B ministry, leaving them only with a clerical job," an official said.

dna had earlier reported that a committee headed by DFP Director General Neelam Kapur was in the process of identifying "media dark spots" -- a list of rural, tribal locations --where private players could help publicise the government's flagship programmes.