TV, app, rallies: How brand Modi plays in election

Agencies
April 4, 2019

New Delhi, Apr 4: If Prime Minister Narendra Modi wins this spring's general election, as is widely expected, it will also be another massive victory for the marketing machine created to amplify Brand Modi into every Indian living room.

Opinion polls regularly show Modi is India's most popular politician, and to turn that appeal into votes, his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has pulled out all the stops from the most modern methods of communication to the very traditional.

There is the recently launched "NaMo TV" dedicated to the 68-year-old leader, a Narendra Modi mobile app the party says has been downloaded by 100 million people, and a massive social media following across every major platform in India.

Modi and the BJP have a combined 57.5 million followers on Twitter, four times the total for the main opposition Congress party and its president Rahul Gandhi.

Modi is the world's third-most-followed politician on Twitter after former U.S. President Barack Obama and current President Donald Trump.

The BJP itself claims to have more members than any other political party in the world.

Polls for the world's biggest democratic vote open on a rolling basis between April 11 and May 19.

Modi is widely expected to be in a position to form a new government after the election, according to pollsters, with the big question whether he will win an outright majority or be forced into trying to form a coalition.

With the campaign now in full swing, the BJP says Modi physically reaches out to more than 250,000 people a day through the many rallies he addresses.

Most of those are then carried live across multiple party platforms and news channels across India, including the nation's public broadcaster.

"He is doing three to four rallies every day. One rally would cover three to four constituencies," said Vijay Chauthaiwale, who is in charge of BJP's foreign affairs department.

Last Sunday 10 million people watched a TV programme in which Modi interacted with the country's security guards, he added.

Opposition parties have complained the BJP is gaining an unfair advantage by using the state broadcaster and the NaMo TV to air its propaganda. The BJP has denied the accusations but the Election Commission has said it's looking into the complaints.

Early Start

On Wednesday alone, Modi addressed as many as four rallies, starting early in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh and ending late in a constituency 2,300 km away in the western state of Maharashtra.

Gandhi spoke in three rallies, all in the northeast.

Even before the election dates were announced on March 10, Modi went on a spree to launch various public projects across more than 16 states, often using those events to broadcast the achievements of his government.

"The opposition is way behind the curve," said a close aide to Modi who declined to be named as he was not authorised to speak with reporters. "Even before the official inauguration of the political campaign on March 28, he completed the first phase of campaigning. Now it's the second phase."

Congress accuses Modi and the BJP of misusing its powers and deep pockets to try and influence voters.

“Modi used public projects, government-sponsored events as a vehicle to serve his political campaigning," Congress's chief spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala said. "We know the voters understand this strategy and they will make the right choice of defeating his party.”

Lacking Helicopters

Congress also complained in January that it was struggling to find enough helicopters to ferry its leaders because the BJP had reserved most of the available aircraft well in advance.

The BJP has indeed substantially increased its income and party membership in the past five years in power.

In 2017/18, the BJP’s total income including donations stood at 10.27 billion rupees compared with 1.9 billion rupees for Congress, according to the Association for Democratic Reforms, a Delhi-based advocacy group that examines political funding and candidate disclosure forms.

"There's a huge gap between our campaign and their (Congress) campaign," BJP spokesman Gopal Krishna Agarwal said. "We're much ahead in our communication, on organisational structure, outreach schemes etc."

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News Network
March 2,2020

New Delhi, Mar 2: The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a curative petition filed by convict Pawan Kumar Gupta who was sentenced to death in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case.

A five-judge bench headed by Justice N V Ramana said that no case is made out for re-examining the conviction and the punishment of the convict.

Other members of the bench were justices Arun Mishra, R F Nariman, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan.

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News Network
February 28,2020

Feb 28: The best economic tonic for the coronavirus shock is to contain its spread and worry about stimulus later, said Raghuram Rajan, former head of the Reserve Bank of India.

There’s little central banks can do, and while more government spending would help, the priority should be on convincing companies and households that the virus is under control, he said.

“People want to have a sense that there is a limit to the spread of this virus perhaps because of containment measures or because there is hope that some kind of viral solution can be found,” Rajan told Bloomberg Television’s Haidi Stroud Watts and Shery Ahn.

“At this point I would say the best thing that governments can do is to really fight the epidemic rather than worry about stimulus measures that comes later,” said Rajan, who is currently a professor at the Chicago Booth School of Business.

The spread of coronavirus is pushing the world economy toward its worst performance since the financial crisis more than a decade ago.

Bank of America Corp. economists warned clients Thursday that they now expect 2.8% global growth this year, the weakest since 2009.

“We have moved from extreme confidence in markets to extreme panic, all in the space of one week,” said Rajan, who previously was chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

The virus outbreak will force companies to rethink supply chains and overseas production facilities, he said.

“I think we will see a lot of rethinking on this, coming on the back of the trade disruption, now we have this,” Rajan said. “Globalization in production is going to be hit quite badly.”

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News Network
January 13,2020

New Delhi, Jan 13: The Delhi High Court on Monday sought response of the city police, Delhi government, WhatsApp Inc, Google Inc and Apple Inc on a plea of three JNU professors to preserve data, CCTV footage and other evidence relating to the January 5 violence on the varsity campus.

The Delhi Police informed the court that it has asked the JNU administration to preserve and hand over CCTV footage of the violence.

Justice Brijesh Sethi listed the matter for further hearing on Tuesday.

The court was told by Delhi government Standing Counsel (criminal) Rahul Mehra that the police has not yet received any response from the university administration.

The counsel said police has also written to WhatsApp to preserve data of two groups "Unity Against Left" and "Friends of RSS" including messages, pictures and videos and phone numbers of members, related to JNU violence incident.

The petition was filed by JNU professors Ameet Parameswaran, Atul Sood and Shukla Vinayak Sawant seeking necessary directions to the Delhi Police Commissioner and Delhi government.

The petition also sought direction to the Delhi Police to retrieve all CCTV footage of JNU campus.

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