Congress’s PR machinery failed to dilute impact
Ever since the Congress was thrashed in the Assembly elections to four States, the party has been at pains to say that it could not adequately convey the message of development to the voters. That way it sought to deflect the criticism from the failures of its senior party leaders such as Mr Rahul Gandhi, who led the campaign from the front, and maintain the position that the party had a lot of positives for the people which did not get reflected in the results. In the first place, it is difficult to believe that the Congress, with its massive propaganda machinery, supplemented by another at the disposal of the Government at the Centre, could not do its job.
Even assuming that the publicity wings of both the party and the Union Government performed poorly, the question is: Where was the need in the first place to publicise what Congress leaders believe is development that is clear for all except the cynical to seeIJ The perfect example which the party projects is Delhi, where it lost miserably. Party leaders have been breathless talking of the Metro, flyovers and what not to demonstrate the development which the Sheila Dikshit regime is said to have brought in her close to 15 years of rule in the city-State. Assuming that the people are rather blind to all these achievements and need heavy prodding to see the obvious, the huge media blitzkrieg which the Congress launched during its reign should have turned the tables on the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Aam Aadmi Party. That it did not shows that the people got the right message and not the one the Congress desperately wanted them to have. According to some reports, the Sheila Dikshit Government had spent around Rs 20 crore in the last 15 years on advertising its achievements.
These paid efforts encompassed the print and the electronic media, including the radio. The irony is that, according to these reports, half the amount had come from the pockets of the very people it sought to win over — it came from the State's Department of Information and Publicity — while the rest was borne by various State agencies. Neither the catchy Dilli dil se nor the short films showing people with happy, glowing faces because of the many ‘people-oriented' measures they were beneficiaries of, could halt the Congress's downward slide.
The Congress does not miss an opportunity even today to ridicule the BJP's ‘India Shining' campaign. The party must begin to assess why its own multiple prongs to woo the voters through the expensive publicity measures fell flat on the face. As far as Delhi is concerned, the reasons are obvious. The party had nothing to offer by way of solace or plan of action on the day-to-day issues of rising prices, high electricity bills, shortage of potable water and deteriorating law and order. No amount of publicity could camouflage the Congress and its Government's failures on these fronts. In the eventuality, party managers must have been indeed naïve to believe that the ‘development’ plank would work.