Politics in an image trap

There are three reasons for this. First, this time, unlike in the Lok Sabha election, the smaller parties have been totally marginalised in the slugfest — apart from Mizoram, it is broadly the BJP pitted against the Congress in Delhi, Rajasthan andMadhya Pradesh. Second, in the March election, Sonia Gandhi hadn’t quite emerged as the `face’ of the Congress, even while Vajpayee was successfully projected as the “Man India Awaits”.

The third factor is that it has come to be viewed as a mini-referendum on the BJP as a party of governance. The BJP has, of course, always denied that this is the case. But by wearing the fear of the Congress toppling its government on its sleeve, it seems to have unwittingly succumbed to the logic of the assumption.

It is this fear that has led the party to borrow the pigments of the Congress’s 1984 advertising campaign to colour its own canvas. The BJP ad that the Election Commission prohibited a few days ago implied that a whole gallery of rogues, from Dawood Ibrahim to Mast Gul, were eagerly awaiting a Congress victory. “The country is still paying a price for their exploits. Just when they are on the run, will you usher in their mentors back to power?”, so goes the ad’s clinching argument. It strongly recalls theone Rediffusion did for Rajiv Gandhi’s first election. One insertion had asked: “Will the country’s border finally be moved to your doorstep?” That campaign had, incidentally, raised a storm of protest from opposition parties of the day, including the BJP.

The attempt in both cases is really to stir dormant fears of “the enemy”, within and without, “unpatriotic” forces waiting to destroy the nation. But how successful can such an approach be? Much depends on whether this strategy can help disperse the widespread public disquiet at galloping prices. Another interesting BJP ad released this week attempted to take the vexatious price rise head on. It had Vajpayee saying: “We know you paid a price for onion for some days. But the price you will pay for a corrupt government is far higher.” Note that the word “high”, which should have qualified the phrase “price of onions”, is conspicuously missing. There is, in fact, no promise made by the party to control prices. The BJP preferred to skirt it,perhaps because of the realisation that in the voter’s mind it is irrevocably viewed as a “traders’ party”.

The emphasis instead is solely on triggering the fear syndrome through sledgehammer questions: “Will a few days of difficulty make you forget decades of corruption by successive Congress governments? Terrorism? Heinous crimes? Scams by top leaders? Mayhem from across the borders? Tottering economy? Riots and massacres?” The last line is eloquently brief: “Are onions still dearer?” Interestingly, the customary exhortation to vote for the party is missing. It ends on a defiant note — almost daring the voter to plumb for the Congress and get smacked on the face.

But the price rise had come in handy for the BJP in the 1989 Lok Sabha election. One of its ads had the cartoon of a voter put through the wringer, and the words: “They align with vested interests to squeeze you”. This was followed by a table comparing the prices of 1984 with those of 1989. The campaign was to be something of awatershed for the BJP. It helped the party increase its Lok Sabha presence from 2 seats to 85. It was this campaign too that saw it flashing the Hindutva card for the first time. “The cancer of minorityism is eating into India’s vitals” went the banner line of one of its insertions. The theme persisted in all the party’s advertising campaigns through the early ’90s. Until, that is, the demolition of the Ayodhya mosque demolished that plank as well. By 1993, when four northern states went to the polls, a survey conducted by the party indicated that the temple issue had outlived its utility and that “bread and butter” ones were the flavour of the day.

There is a pattern in all this. Parties in power invariably tend to emphasise stability and security, while governance and prices become natural debating points for the opposition. The Janta Party’s successful “Bread and Freedom” theme ended a particularly dark period in the nation’s history. But just two-and-a-half years later, public anger over theEmergency seemed to have miraculously dissipated. Mrs Gandhi just had to remind the electorate of the price of onions to more than double Congress representation in the Lok Sabha. The party won 353 seats in 1980.

For the Congress, dynastic appeal was constantly flogged right through the 1980s. If the line Na jaat pe/na paat pe/Indiraji ki baat pe/ mohur lagegi hath pe was produced in 1980, by 1984 it was Indiraji ki antim ichchha/ Boond boond se desh ki raksha. By 1989, it was still, Indiraji ka woh balidaan/ Yaad rakhega Hindustan.

The 1998 version of that legacy wears a new face. In the ads of the Congress this time, Sonia appears in startling isolation, completely reinvented. The images of the loving bahu, the grieving widow, the doting mother have all been shed. There she is with her head demurely covered and hands held together in a namaste. If she was a box of detergent, the catchline would have been: Cleaner. Better. Indianer.

While the BJP ad sees the voter in termsof the Other — they are referred to as “you”, the Congress one uses the all-embracing “we”. What have we got, it asks, from BJP rule? It is as if Sonia, with the rest of us, is suffering because of backbreaking prices, no onion, no potatoes, no mustard oil, no power, no water, no safety, no security.

But political words and images are at best gossamer if they don’t strike the voter as credible. No rhetoric can breach the credibility gap if one exists. And this is as it should be in a democracy. In 1989, the Congress spent an estimated Rs 40 crore on an advertising campaign that showcased Rajiv Gandhi and had as its salespitch the line: “My heart beats for India”. The voter’s heart remained unmoved. The Rajiv Congress slipped from the 415 seats it held in 1984 to a pathetic 197.