Ads, Taxpayers’ Money & The Dynasty
This post was prompted by a tweet from Ashik earlier this week. Â He wrote:
Who has paid money for this? Congress party or Sonia/Manmohan? Isnt this free publicity by taxpayers money?
Before we go any further, here’s a pop-quiz: Can you guess the number of schemes, programmes and institutions in India named after the Nehru-Gandhi family? 100? Wrong. 200? Wrong? 300? Wrong. 400? Now you are getting close…As of 2009, the number stood at 450+. I have no doubt that it must have increased since then.
Of course, we are not just talking schemes and programmes.
Almost exactly a month ago, Churumuri carried a post that counted 108 advertisements in 48 pages spread over 12 news-papers on the occasion of Rajiv Gandhi’s birthday. Thankfully the spend on his death anniversary was more sober: a mere 69 ads amounting to 41 published pages.  Who paid for it? We did. You and me – out of our pocket, via the taxes we pay to the government.
Back to the 450-odd schemes. Almost 2 years ago, noted journalist A Surya Prakash wrote a long, well-researched article titled “All in the name of the Nehru-Gandhis“. In the post, he mentioned how:
In a planned and systematic effort to gain unfair advantage over other political parties, the Congress Party has named all major government programmes, projects and institutions in the country after three members of the Nehru-Gandhi family – Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru – who are its icons, and disturbed the level playing field in the electoral arena.
He went on to note:
Over the last 18 years, on a rough estimate about 450 Central and State Government programmes, projects and national and state level institutions involving public expenditure of hundreds of thousands of crores of rupees have been named after these three individuals.
…Among the big ticket programmes that have been cleverly named after members of this family by the Union Government to extract unjust electoral mileage is the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (rural electrification programme), which involves an outgo of Rs 28,000 crore during the Eleventh Plan period (Rs 5500 Cr in fiscal 2008-09).. The drinking water mission, with an allocation of Rs 21,000 crore over three years (Rs 7300 crore in 2008-09 and Rs 7400 Cr in 2009-10) is also named after him and is called the Rajiv Gandhi Drinking Water Mission. Other schemes, touching millions of people, which bear his name are the Rajiv Gandhi National Creche Scheme for Children of Working Mothers; the Rajiv Gandhi Udyami Mitra Yojana ( to promote small enterprises); the Rajiv Gandhi Shramik Kalyan Yojana and the Rajiv Gandhi Shilpi Swasthya Bima Yojana ( both insurance schemes).
Likewise, there are many mega programmes named after Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru by the Centre…This trend is even more apparent in the states, which have vied with each other to name programmes and schemes after these three members of the Nehru-Gandhi Family whenever the Congress Party was in power. Here is a sample: Rajiv Gandhi Breakfast Scheme, Pondicherry; Rajiv Ratna Awas Yojana, Delhi; Rajiv Arogyasri Health Insurance scheme, Andhra Pradesh; Rajiv Gandhi Computer Literacy Mission, Assam; Rajiv Gandhi Bridges and Roads Infrastructure Development Programme, Haryana; Rajiv Gandhi Vidyarthi Suraksha Yojana, Maharastra; Rajiv Gandhi Tourism Development Mission, Rajasthan; Indira Kranthi Patham Scheme and Indira Jeevitha Bima Pathakam, Andhra Pradesh; Indira Gandhi Niradhar Yojana and Indira Gandhi Landless Agriculture Labour Scheme, Maharastra; Indira Gandhi Priyadarshini Vivah Shagun Yojana, Haryana; Indira Gandhi Calf-Rearing Scheme, Andhra Pradesh.
…Obviously, the plan is to ensure maximum recall of Brand Congress among voters at every stage in life. Therefore, nothing is left out. The crèche for children of the working poor is named after Rajiv Gandhi. So is a breakfast scheme for poor children. …Shockingly, even Brand IIM had been tinkered with. While all institutes of management started by the Centre go under the IIM brand, the Congress Party has mischievously named the IIM is Shillong as the Rajiv Gandhi Indian Institute of Management.
…Such is the obsession of the Congress Party with three members of the Nehru-Gandhi family that even the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi has been virtually forgotten.
…Equally glaring is the omission of many other eminent Indians including Sardar Vallabhai Patel, India’s first Deputy Prime Minister who undertook the arduous task of integrating 563 princely states into a single nation and Dr.B.R.Ambedkar, who presided over the committee that drafted our Constitution and embedded basic values of democracy and social justice. ..The list of those ignored is a pretty long one. They include Rabindranath Tagore, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Bal Gandadhar Tilak, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Sarojini Naidu, Jayaprakash Narayan, Acharya Vinoba Bhave, C.Rajagopalachari, Rajendra Prasad and every other stalwart of the freedom movement. Also ignored are great saints like Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda; Social reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Mahatma Phule; great scientists like C.V.Raman, Homi Bhabha, Vikram Sarabhai and Narlekar and great patriots like Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekar Azad.
For the record, here is the whole list compiled by A Surya Prakash and here is the disappointing response he got from the Election Commission on his complaint. Â In effect, the EC washed its hands off the matter…
Which leaves just you and me and do something about it..How about sharing A Surya Prakash’s list with your friends? along with his article? How about compiling a record of other such egregious attempts at promoting the “dynasty”? How about making them aware about the art of subliminal messaging (a bad example of which can be found here)? And how about reverting to neutral nomenclature in your own conversations/discussions about these institutions and schemes? Comments & thoughts welcome as always.
>> Fun Task for 2nd October: Count the number of ads you see commemorating Lal Bahadur Shastri.
Related Post:Â Rajiv Gandhi, Ministry of Food Processing and a sense of history
Re: Fun task….I don’t have to wait till 2nd Oct…the answer is ZERO.
Even the greatest of kings who lived, roamed and took take care of BhartaVarsha never named, whatever they did for the sake of their province and people, in a manner like this. Sick dynasty the Nehru family. If Congress is allowed to stay in Indian political history they will come back and start naming everything as if belonging to Sonia Maino and Rahul G. As it is, Congress are advertising Rahul G birthday as “Farmers Day.” How enlightening!!
From What’s in a name? Just about every project if you are in Big 5 PMs by MOHAMMED ANAS NEW DELHI | 9th Oct
..According to ministry (Union Ministry of Urban Development) officials, in 2010-11, the maximum amount was spent on remembering Rajiv Gandhi, Rs 300 cr, followed by Indira Gandhi, Nehru, Shastri and Charan Singh. Not a rupee was spent on the others.
The ministry’s Department of Works, which looks after these occasions, issues advertisements in newspapers and televisions and organises formal ceremonies at the memorials of these late leaders.
Giving information about the overall expenditure incurred, a joint director in the Department of Works said that around Rs 300 cr was spent to mark the birth and death anniversaries of Rajiv Gandhi. “This amounts to a substantial chunk of the money provided by the ministry. Less than this was spent on Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. The least was spent for Lal Bahadur Shastri and Charan Singh,” he said.
The officer could not explain why no money was spent on the other PMs.
When this correspondent asked the office of the Union Urban Development Minister Kamal Nath about this discrimination, the officials said that they did not know that their ministry organised such functions.
Professor Saugata Roy, Minister of State for Urban Development said that the Prime Ministers were discriminated against as they were dead. When reminded that even Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were not alive, he sounded embarrassed and pleaded ignorance on the subject.
More on this: From Taxpayer picking up costly image building tab by J GOPIKRISHNAN, 29th Nov ’11:
The scam-tainted UPA Government is using public money for its image building exercise. The Song and Drama Division under the Information and Broadcasting Ministry has come out with a Light and Song dance-drama titled Jamuniya-Tasweer Badalte Bharat Ki in Hindi.
The drama, which mainly focuses on the glory of Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, is now being translated into regional language and Rs 50 crore has been allotted as first instalment for this exercise. The second instalment of Rs 50 crore will be released next year for translation in other languages and conducting the show in 2013, sources said. The first half of the show covers the history of independent India and rest is devoted to the glory of the UPA I and II.
The two-hour long audio-video CD of the Light and Song show available with The Pioneer exposes how the history of modern India is being distorted in a bid to credit the entire development of the country only to the Prime Minister trio of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty — Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi .
The Centre’s PR exercise completely blacks out someone like Congress’ own Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, who liberalised the Indian economy. Like Rao, former Prime Ministers VP Singh, Chandrasekhar, Morarji Desai and Charan Singh have been completely ignored in the show. The show devotes just three seconds each to former Prime Ministers Lal Bahadur Shastri and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. That too by inserting their still pictures and giving them no credit in the narrative.
…
According to the expense details available with The Pioneer, on an average a single day show costs more than Rs 2 lakhs. Around 70 artistes are needed for each show; of which majority belong to the Song and Drama Divisions while others are hired locally.
According to the bills and vouchers available with The Pioneer, the seven-day show in Ranchi cost Rs 15,65,891 while Rs 5,85,000 was spent on a four-day show in Rae Bareli and four-day shows each in Panna (Madhya Pradesh) and Amravati (Maharashtra) cost Rs 5,44,050 each.
More on this…From 30 crores of butter by Sneha:
..our government has spent around Rs. 30 crores (could be more) on advertisements on the birth and death anniversaries of Rajiv and Indira Gandhi in the years 2009 to 2011. A Right to Information (RTI) reply from Directorate of Advertising & Visual Publicity (DAVP) tells us as much, along with the dates and amounts of how much was spent.
…
In 2011 Rs. 4.79 crore was spent on Rajiv Gandhi’s and Rs. 2.46 crore on Indira Gandhi’s birth anniversaries respectively. Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting CM Jatua had revealed as much in a reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha in the last session. …Minister Jatua also revealed the following: the Health Ministry spent over Rs 95 lakh, Ministry of New and Renewable energy spent over Rs 82 lakh, Ministry of Tourism spent Rs 79 lakh, Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation spent over Rs 65 lakh, Information and Broadcasting Ministry spent over Rs 58 lakh, Social Justice ministry spent over Rs 51 lakh, Women and Child Development Ministry spent Rs 25 lakh and Ministry for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Rs 21 lakh.
…This is not paying tribute to national leaders. This is kowtowing. …
What the RTI reveals could be a deflated figure. In his editorial titled Memories at Public Expense that appeared in The Telegraph, Ramchandra Guha writes – “A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that on May 21, 2010, perhaps Rs. 60 or Rs. 70 crore were spent by the taxpayer — without his and her consent — on praising Rajiv Gandhi. Since the practice has been in place since 2005, the aggregate expenditure to date on this account is probably in excess of Rs. 300 croreâ€
From Rajiv Gandhi’s birth anniversary prompts government ads worth crores by Sunetra Choudhury, August 20, 2012 :
New Delhi: A galaxy of ads – colour, black-and-white, half-page and smaller – all starring Rajiv Gandhi were nestled, many of them adjacent to each other, in today’s newspapers. They varied in cost between one and four crores each, depending on whether the ad was created and placed by a private ad agency or by the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP),
…Written rebukes from the Cabinet Secretary have been ignored, say sources, by ministries who like to prove to the party’s leadership that their loyalty to the top rung, past and present, remains unshaken.
…
In May, a Right to Information application filed by NDTV established that the Central government has spent Rs. 58 crore on ads in the last three years. Rs. 15 crore were spent on ads honouring Mahatma Gandhi; another Rs. 12 crore were used for ads in honour of BR Ambedkar.
Ads on the Gandhi family (Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajiv Gandhi and Indira Gandhi) added up to roughly Rs. 22 crore, and that did not include today’s campaign.
The RTI also reveals that state governments are equally generous with their advertising expenditure – Andhra Pradesh, Delhi and Uttarakhand are the big spenders. In Andhra Pradesh, Rs. 8 crore have been spent in three years on ads for former chief minister YSR Reddy who died in a helicopter crash in 2009.
Apparently, this is no longer limited to India..
From Devesh Kapur’s “The elite’s classrooms”, Nov 12, 2012:
The Indian government recently announced a grant of Rs 25 crore to Oxford University for the Indira Gandhi Centre for Sustainable Development in Somerville College.Source]
Somewhat related…
A brief excerpt from Kasturba Gandhi’s commemoration took up Rs83 lakh in 2 years:
Nearly Rs 83 lakh was spent in commemorating the death anniversary of Kasturba Gandhi during the last two years, which was 60% more than the combined expenditure incurred on the death and birth anniversary events of Mahatma Gandhi during that period.
An RTI response has revealed that the Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti, which works under culture ministry, had spent Rs2.46 lakh for publicity and printing of invitation cards for observing Kasturba Gandhi’s death anniversary ‘Nirwan Diwas’ on February 22 last year while this year’s expenditure was Rs2.68 lakh.
The Samiti had also incurred an additional expenditure of Rs30.44 lakh in 2011 and Rs47.17 lakh this year in observing her death anniversary.
The details given by the Samiti to activist Subhash Agrawal under RTI show that the expenditure incurred on Nirwan Diwas of Kasturba, wife of Mahatma Gandhi, was 60% more than the combined expenditure incurred on the birth and death anniversary of the Father of the Nation which was Rs51.86 lakh.
From Journalism of Chicanery by Anand Ranganathan:
..The money that’s been wasted, or the obvious dynastic tilt it’s been wasted on, is not what’s frightening. What’s frightening is that Rs 20 crore is just the central government expenditure on Rajiv Gandhi. That there are 28 state governments itching to emulate the big brother at the centre is what’s frightening. Multiply Rs 20 crore over four years by a conservative 20 and you get closer to the figure that’s been dished out in his memory. Yes – that’s Rs 400 crore for one man! Our money. And who’s benefitted? Not the poor and the needy. What’s been eradicated? Not poverty and social evil.
Do read..
In keeping with tradtion, Assam minister names scheme after wife, Mar 26, 2013, Prasanta Mazumdar:
…Assam public health engineering minister Gautam Roy has announced a housing scheme for the poor on the lines of the Indira Awas Yojana. Only that it is named Mandira Awas Yojana (MAY).
If you are wondering ‘Mandira who?’, it’s the name of the minister’s wife who was recently elected to the assembly from Algapur.
From A Multi-Crore Momento Mori by Sriranjani Datta, May 22, ’13:
..Yesterday – May 21, 2013 – was Rajiv Gandhi’s 22nd death anniversary. And various ministers and ministries from and of the UPA government put on display their skill at fanning the collective flame of political sycophancy.
Just so you know how well your taxpaying money has been used by the government, we did a quick calculation of the ad spend in the English newspapers in New Delhi. Here are some quick facts.
The ads were released through the Department of Audio Visual Publicity (DAVP).
The departments of the government who are reminding us of the “magical†powers of Rajiv Gandhi were the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Tourism, Human Resource Development, Social Justice and Empowerment, Power, Micro Small and Medium Industries, Information and Broadcasting, Steel, and the state governments of Haryana and Rajasthan and the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology.
65 advertisements were printed in 11 English dailies in Delhi.
Over 38 of these were full-page ads.
And how much did such a restrained display of remembrance cost us the taxpayer?
…
And that adds up to a tidy sum of Rs 80 crore spent in just Delhi.
On the 19th death anniversary of Rajiv Gandhi, historian Ramachandra Guha in an editorial in The Telegraph had written: “A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that on May 21, 2010, perhaps Rs 60 or 70 crore were spent by the taxpayer — without his and her consent — on praising Rajiv Gandhi. Since the practice has been in place since 2005, the aggregate expenditure to date on this account is probably in excess of Rs 300 croreâ€.
Going by this year’s ad spend of Rs 80 crore in just Delhi, we’d say it’s safe to add a few more hundred crore to the figure calculated by Guha.
From Poll sops? Two universities for Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s Rae Bareli, July 11, 2013:
…
The cabinet has cleared the setting up of the Indira Gandhi Women’s National University at a cost of Rs. 500 crore. A Bill to set up the university will be introduced in the monsoon session of Parliament.
An aviation academy in Rae Bareli will also be turned into a full-fledged university.
Somewhat related: Did Nehru promote a dynasty? by Varnam
From Why name schemes after Gandhis? by NDTV:
There are:
12 schemes run by the centre,
60 state schemes,
30 tournaments and trophies, 20 stadiums,
15 sanctuaries and museums,
5 airports and ports,
over a 100 educational institutions,
50 awards, 40 hospitals and hundreds of roads and crossings
named after the “Nehru-Gandhi” family.
From How not to remember Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha | Jan 30, 2014
…
The then prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, also deplored the mania to name so many things after Gandhi. The current craze, if not checked, might lead to thousands of roads, parks, squares named after him. This would be both empty symbolism as well as bad aesthetics. It would “not contribute either to conveniences or to the glory of the father of the nation. Only confusion will result as well as a certain drab uniformity. Most of us will then live in Gandhi roads in Gandhinagars or Gandhigrams”.