Rajasthan: Gandhian simplicity failing twice, Ashok Gehlot embraces mega PR overdrive for elusive win

With elections barely four months away, Ashok Gehlot is on a massive overdrive to showcase his “good governance”. (File image)

For decades, he has been the wizard of Rajasthan politics with a knack for outwitting opponents. Despite his political dexterity, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot is perceived as a leader inspired by Gandhian simplicity.

But Gehlot’s remarkable transformation from a low-profile Gandhian leader to a hi-tech, social media-friendly CM has taken political circles by surprise in this election year.

The significant change in Gehlot’s style was first noticed in the publicity campaign for creating a buzz around the Rajasthan budget this year. The catchy slogan of “Bachat, Rahat, Badhat” (Savings, Relief and Progress) was mounted on huge hoardings to showcase Gehlot's major schemes like the health initiative known as Chiranjeevi Yojana. As the budget speech was also streamed live in colleges and educational institutions for the first time in the state, the campaign generated lots of hype and eyeballs.

Weeks later, Gehlot launched the “Inflation Relief Camps” to provide benefits of various welfare schemes to eligible people in the state. Many felt the camps might fail in the scorching summer but a huge, high-profile ad blitz imbued in dark pink colours turned the camps into quite a colourful carnival.

The effort to give financial relief to the common man battling high inflation helped connect people with the top ten flagship schemes of the Gehlot dispensation. Official estimates suggest nearly 2 crore families got relief and over 7.5 crore guarantee cards were made for beneficiaries to utilise these schemes.

With elections barely four months away, Gehlot is on a massive overdrive to showcase his “good governance” – his central plank to retain power. Ranging from the flagship Chiranjeevi Health Insurance scheme to enacting the Right to Health Act and reviving the Old Pension Scheme for employees to the recent Minimum Guaranteed Income Bill for the entire adult population of the state, Gehlot is leaving no stone unturned to push his social welfare schemes.

Significantly, though Gehlot’s welfare measures in his earlier tenures were lauded, they hardly got any electoral dividends. In his first term from 1998-2003, despite at least one survey rating him as best performing CM and success in drought relief works, Gehlot failed on the electoral front. Similarly, in his second stint as CM, several welfare steps, topped by a free medicine scheme, won few votes – and the Congress plunged to its worst-ever defeat in Rajasthan in 2013.

Having failed to capitalise on his welfarism in the past, Gehlot has this time enlisted the services of a PR agency – DesignBoxed – to create a publicity blitzkrieg about his schemes. The company from Punjab has reportedly been recommended by Karnataka’s Deputy CM DK Shivakumar. To make the Gehlot campaign better than BJP, DesignBoxed is designing huge publicity for welfare schemes that Gehlot views as his biggest assets.

This multimedia blitz has meant Gehlot’s laidback Gandhian approach giving way to a colourful and hi-tech style. While the buzz over the Budget and the Inflation Relief Camps were initial forays of DesignBoxed, Gehlot and his government are now donning a social media friendly avatar.

Going with the times, Gehlot plans to use social media Influencers to popularise his schemes. A recent government notification states that besides print and electronic media, social media influencers will be hired to advertise government works and will be paid up to five lakhs a month to help reach a wider audience!

To intensify his public engagement, Gehlot launched a Video Creation Contest in July on the major schemes of his government. Besides attracting over one crore public registrations for creating videos to win daily prizes of around Rs 3 lakh, the contest has set the state abuzz with discussions on welfare schemes.

In addition, Gehlot is holding “Labharthi Samvad” or interactions with government scheme beneficiaries. While the coinage seems a straight lift from the BJP’s usage of “labharthi”, Gehlot is breaking away from the traditional political mould to leverage contemporary trends to garner support.

Beyond these is a huge publicity blitz in mainstream media – newspapers around the country are full of Gehlot government ads. All this comes at enormous cost but officials are tight-lipped about the money being spent. PR experts claim the unprecedented ad-blitz unleashed by the Gehlot government is bound to cost several thousand crores.

Interestingly, neither the Congress high command nor state ministers figure anywhere in this campaign – only Gehlot is being projected as the epitome of “good governance” for Rajasthan.

Clearly, Gehlot realises that his work alone has not yielded desired electoral outcomes in the past. His strategy this time is to combine pro-poor welfare schemes with an aggressive PR campaign to combat Rajasthan’s revolving door tradition of the last 25 years.

Gehlot's schemes and new style have undeniably created a big buzz, with the focus chiefly on the CM himself – a far cry from his simple, shy persona of the past. This departure from his low-key, Gandhian image cultivated over 45 years reflects Gehlot's eagerness to woo votes and retain power in Rajasthan.

Whether this novel mix of welfarism and showmanship will prove sufficient to achieve Gehlot’s goal is a million-dollar question that only the upcoming elections will answer.