We in India are inured to seeing sundry government factotums embellish official advertisements in our newspapers. In Western democracies, to have a politician’s face embedded in an official advertisement would be repugnant to the public. Americans are not confronted with government advertisements showcasing Obama’s face.
In our feudal society, the beaming photo of a minister is not just expected but seen as essential to ministerial functioning. Fortunately, we are now going to have an ombudsman to regulate government advertising. Soon those huge government advertisements adorned by politicians’ faces, covertly a means of garnering personal publicity at the taxpayers’ cost, may abate.
Almost every day the national dailies carry full page advertisements and three page supplements extolling the achievements of a particular state government. The Central ministries too put out huge publications which recount national achievements or announce new schemes often lacking verifiable details about costs, the target beneficiaries and the timelines for their execution.
When it comes to publicity blitzkriegs, apart from the Delhi government which appears to have made publicity a virtue, states surpass one another by releasing entire spread sheets in English national dailies although the beneficiaries’ are overwhelmingly Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu speaking. Presaged by photographs of Chief Ministers, and notwithstanding that the bulk of the readership of such newspapers has no link with the either the schemes or the beneficiaries, such supplements just seem to mushroom. It is nothing but an effort to garner visibility and buy gratuitous publicity. And possibly infuriate political rivals.