No brand like the freebie-doling hand

Having missed the action on the ground as four States went to the polls in May because I was travelling, a film on the long haul flight back home grabbed my attention. It was connected to political strategy and branding in an election in Bolivia, with American strategists directing the campaigns of the rival political parties.

Just as all our top leaders, from Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 2014 general election to Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, had used brilliant brand managers to emerge winners, the 2015 Hollywood drama Our Brand is Crisis also depicted the importance of branding. Here Sandra Bullock (Jane Bodine) plays an out-of-form American brand strategist for Bolivian politician Pedro Castillo (a fictionalised version of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, Bolivian president for two non-consecutive terms) in the 2002 election. The indigenous young demanding reform and representation in government, and the ouster of entities such as the International Monetary Fund to ensure more equitable development.

Castillo’s ratings are low, and Bodine advocates smear campaigning, which almost every political system in the world now uses with abandon. She also tutors Castillo to give hard-hitting speeches on the huge crisis — invented by her — the country is facing. The alarmed electorate votes Castillo to power and his first act is to invite the IMF, against his electoral promise for a referendum first, leading to protests by the disenchanted youth.

The content had frightening parallels to our own politics where successive governments of different political parties have made brilliant use of branding and smear campaigns to triumph. The movie also reinforced how particularly in Tamil Nadu, the two major Dravidian parties feel no need for any big-bang brand managers. They’ve outdone each other in promising, and delivering, freebies. In true filmi style, where Robin Hood figures enthral the masses, NT Rama Rao of the Telugu Desam in Andhra Pradesh was the first to introduce the ₹2-a-kg rice scheme for BPL families in April 1983.

Several see-saws followed with the subsequent Congress regime scrapping it, perhaps in a futile fiscal prudence attempt, and increased the price of rice to ₹3.50 a kg. NTR revived the scheme after regaining power in 1994, but his son-in-law, Chandrababu Naidu, who ousted NTR in 1995, scrapped it and raised the price to ₹3.50 a kg and later to ₹5.25 in 2000. But the astute Rajasekara Reddy of the Congress re-introduced the ₹2 pricing in 2008.

But what happened in Tamil Nadu on subsidies and freebies has left Andhra miles behind. If there was ever a strong case for a freebie, it was the midday meal scheme in schools attributed to M G Ramachandran, but which was actually introduced in primary schools by K Kamaraj way back in 1962-63. True, it was MGR who put his entire government’s muscle — and heart, if governments have hearts — into strengthening the midday meal scheme, and making the food nutritious by adding an egg as a component.

Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, then propaganda secretary of the AIADMK, and who last fortnight made history by returning to power in Tamil Nadu for a second term after 1982, was put in charge of the midday meal scheme. Soon after it was introduced, I did a round of about 15 schools in the 50-70 km belt from Chennai, and a detailed feature on the teething problems of an excellent scheme was front-paged in the Indian Express . The scheme was a winner on all fronts — education, health and nutrition, humanitarian and economic vis-à-vis investment in both preventive health and tapping the future potential of education. Within hours of publication, Jayalalithaa called our office and told me that she had personally made a surprise visit to the schools mentioned, found our report to be accurate, thanked us and promised to plug the loopholes.

When MGR won the Tamil Nadu Assembly election from his hospital bed in the US in 1985, I distinctly remember the women’s refrain during our electoral rounds: “MGR has put nutritious food in our children’s stomachs; we will only vote for him.”

But over the next 30 years or so, Tamil Nadu’s politicians discovered a sureshot route to victory: instead of putting mega bucks into the pockets of expensive brand strategists who anyway change their loyalty from one election to another, turning the smear campaigns on their head, both the DMK and AIADMK have started spending hundreds of crores of rupees on freebies — electrical mixies, grinders and fans to TV sets, laptops, cycles, gold, and now, smartphones.

Economists may predict fiscal nightmares for the State but looks like Brand Freebie has come to stay!

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