NEW DELHI: Copywriters are working overtime in India to rustle up catchy campaigns for politicos trying to woo the electorate for the general elections this month
The Congress (I) and the Bharatiya Janata Party—two major contenders for power at the center—are already out with a series of professionally-aided advertisements in newspapers.
Poll advertisements in newspapers and magazines were started by the Congress-I during the 1984 Lok Sabha polls. They were repeated on a massive scale in 1989 when the BJP also flashed its messages through the print medium.
The theme the Congress-I campaigns this time is ‘stability’ so their advertisements show a young boy telling his father:”Bapu you said elections are held every five years.” The copy goes on to say that “only a stable government can reassure the people the sanctity of their mandate.”
Another advertisement gives the party stand on the Babri Masjid issue while the third is aimed’ at housewives and workers.
The BJP has based its media campaign on issues like the temple-mosque dispute unstable government the Bofors and how scandals dynastic rule and nepotism.
“For the first time in independent India a change of direction is in sight. The BJP for the first time the Indian voter has the option of choosing a completely new political culture” their advertisement says.
Though the Janata Dal has not issued any official advertisement So far party leader Rama Krishna Hegde has published an advertisement on the reason why the national front government fell and its stand on the temple-mosque dispute It also blames Congress I for instability in the country. “It has destabilized not only the opposition governments but also its own party governments” it says.
The former governor of Jammu and Kashmir Jagmohan who is now a Rajya Sabha MP has also issued an advertisement in newspapers making an impassioned appeal to the electorate to exercise their franchise judiciously keeping in view the interests of the nation.
The all India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu has brought out full page election advertisements in some papers.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 17, 1991
