NREGA Propaganda

For the past month or so, the Central Government has been spamming NDTV with ads targeted at landless villagers, explaining to them, sometimes in Hindi, sometimes in English, the benefits of the NREGS, how the scheme means that they no longer have to migrate to cities, how it also means that women and men get the same pay for the same work, and how they should guard themselves against muster roll fraud.

The ads are as good as we expect government ads to be, but NDTV?

12 thoughts on “NREGA Propaganda”

  2. I wondered too. I guess it is aimed at middle class – to show that govt is doing all this for the poor.

    But there has been an ad on AIR (before 8am news) on nrega for past year or more. Quite well made too.

  3. Yeah, they are the ones where ” Arre Bhai” is transalted to “Oh Brother”…CNN-IBN carried a series of reports that evaluated how successful (or otherwise) the NREGA has been…

  4. If the government is indeed inclined to spread the word among NDTV’s viewers, that means there is somebody doing his job right…. naa! Not possible!

  5. One point though, why should NDTV be held responsible, even to some extent, for the ads it shows.

    NDTV’s purpose is to show news and make money out of ads and other marketing activities. It should ideally not discriminate against ads which are not unethical and immoral. NDTV or for that matter any other tv channel has got nothing to do with ads it shows.

    But yes if the ads are getting shown as news, one has a right to feel appalled.

  6. CNBC Awaaz will be showing a documentary about how the scheme is ‘succeeding’ in some parts of the country, sometime next week. I am yet to come across a negative report about the scheme on any news channel.

  7. Are you watching CNBC TV18.
    They were doing special programming ‘Budget gets real’ anchored by their useless Economics Editor Vivian Fernandes. He cannot even speak fluently, why can’t he let some pretty young thing to present the program and actually do something else. I keep falling of my chair every time he comes on air.

    P.Chidambaram with Montek Singh were in his Sivaganga constituency evaluating NREGA. No wonder the program showed NREGA as a success.

    Then they followed it up with Kamal Naths district few days back.

    I think the minister’s have made a nice deal with tv channels.

  8. Pingback: The Acorn » Farmers won’t be suckered by propaganda

  9. Come Ravikiran. I don’t believe you are that innocent 🙂

    Why do government agencies put out ads in newspapers? Ads that nobody reads. Ever dealt with journalists? What do they demand to give good coverage to your events?

    I think Anonymous Coward understood what’s going on 😉

  10. What are the demographics of NDTV viewers? Even though the channel is aimed at the English speaking urban middle class, are there people in small towns watching the channel? Is it popular in the South (at least for its news)?

  12. A different take on this …
    NDTV is run by Prannoy Roy who happens to be Prakash Karat’s co-brother… so we can its the influence of the left :).

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