In Bihar’s ongoing electoral battle between heavyweight rivals Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav, it is the Congress party that seems to be scoring more points in the war of political advertisements playing constantly on the state’s local television channels. Hitting the TV screens just before the Assembly polls began on Thursday, the Congress party’s stinging ad campaigns aim at outwitting the main competition coming from the ruling JD(U)-BJP’s persuasive feel-good ads. While the Congress,
contesting in all of Bihar’s 243 Assembly constituencies on its own, is still largely considered a lightweight in the direct fight between the state’s regional behemoths, the national party’s advertisement blitzkriegs match its lofty ambitions for this crucial state.
The ruling NDA’s noticeable triumphalism and its confident reliance on chief minister Nitish Kumar’s leadership are facing powerful questions in the Congress’ ads. Both parties have used the common men and women in the ads to drive home their points. The RJD-LJP alliance has, however, stayed away from taking the costly TV route like the Left and other smaller parties.
“Agar Bihar me vikas ba, tah hum gariban ka makaan kahan ba?” (If Bihar has achieved development, where are the houses for us poor folks?” asks a distraught woman in a Congress ad that highlights the failures of the Indira Awas Yojna. In another, a sweating woman in a dark room sitting next to a boy holding books asks: “If Bihar has achieved development, where is electricity?”
Smiling rural schoolgirls in uniform riding bicycles and an urban family unafraid to travel on Bihar roads at night in two of the JD(U)-BJP’s ads remind voters of Mr Kumar’s achievements in raising girls’ school attendance and controlling crime in the past five years.
Mr Kumar himself features in one longish ad, telling voters: “You have to decide now if Bihar would keep progressing like this in the next five years or will once again plunge into the depths of anarchy and destruction like the previous 15 years.”