Around July / August, the Law Commission had proposed
passing a law against a media blitz to woo voters by an outgoing party. The
Commission felt that this is a misuse of public money which is accessible to
the party forming government, because under whatever guise, all the ads are
only about strengthening the image of the government in an effort to ensure
that they become top-of-mind recall by the time elections roll by. The Congress
was not exactly pro this proposal because they had a declared budget of 630
crores planned for advertising themselves as a run up to the elections in 2014.
This extremely important proposal by the Law Commission came
at around the same time that the Supreme Court made a tentative effort to de-criminalise
politics by saying that any person who had a pending case against them would be
ineligible to contest the election, and in the event they are already in a
post, they will have to resign immediately. All parties took up cudgels against
the Supreme Court ruling, so the proposal by the Law Commission went largely
unnoticed.
In the hush around the no-media-blitz proposal, the Congress
machinery has quickly gone into action. You will find heavy advertising about
the various schemes flooding all channels of Doordarshan (DD) and All India
Radio (AIR). Despite the number of private TV channels and FM radio, the rural
reach of DD and AIR remain unsurpassed. Even today, no channel can hope to
compete with the coverage of DD and AIR offers – especially in the remotest of
areas and the smallest of villages. And that is where 80% of India lies.
It is such a pity that a proposal that was 100% in favour of
the people of India has going completely unheeded. The cherry on the icing of
Congress-spend-on-advertising cake came on the day the land Bill was being
discussed in the House. By afternoon, all the radio channels were broadcasting
ads about it! Think about all the implications: Congress had decided to pass
the populist Land Bill; they had hired an agency to make the ad; it was
recorded before the bill was passed...something just isn’t right in all this. At
all.