ELECTION PROPOGANDA BY WRONG MEANS

All sorts of publicity stunts are used during elections by all candidates. Depending upon the availability of funds the mode of operation and the numbers are varied. Thousands of sq.meters of boundary walls of public buildings and private houses are used for writings and fixing of posters. Countless number of party flags and banners are fitted at all available places and all these remain there for the coming five years.

I think no one has conducted any detailed study about the impact of these means of propoganda on the final outcome of the election. For instance, let us imagine that candidate 'A' has written about him in thousands of square metres of walls and candidate 'B' has not written on any walls. Does this make candidate 'A' win the election or candidate 'B' lose the election? I do not think even one vote is added to one's kitty with the help of scribblings made on the walls, posters pasted all around, number of banners stretched over the busy roads or the number of party flags erected on the busy foot paths.  Even during the time when media was not as strong as today, people did not vote at the influence of these propoganda means. Today social media is so popular and available at everyone's reach. Therefore, the political parties must themselves get away from these conventional means and concentrate only on social media. The Election Commission may ask the candidate to slash their expenses considerably.

Even though we are yet to conceive it, Kerala is mainly a tourism oriented state. At present the state economy is mainly depends on external remittances, taxes on alcoholic drinks, lottery tickets, small earning from tourism. We shall have to put more and more efforts to raise the income from tourism industry. The state had a record income of ₹ 36,528.01 crores during 2018 and crossed 40 thousand crores next year. In another couple of years we must raise this over to two lakh crores. We should not squeeze the people any more with high price of alcohol.

If we want to do something to develop the tourism sector, our top most priority should be cleanness of the entire state. We must stop these wall writings, posters, banners, erecting flag posts on road side etc. In many case these banners and boards cover the road indication boards too. On one hand we do not keep our surroundings clean and on the other hand willingly make them more dirty. The people and the government should wake up and do what is needed. The easiest way to keep our state clean from these optical pollution is that the Panchayats, Municipalities and Corporations should erect propoganda boards at all important places and may levy a reasonable amount from those who use this boards. In the case of publicity made on walls the wall owner should be charged heavily on sq.meter basis. Let us do something than simply making speeches all over!

K V George

kvgeorgein@gmail.com