Indian government agency spent millions to promote BJP election slogans

The Central Bureau of Communication is meant to promote government plans. Its ads carried Modi’s party’s catchphrases.

Mumbai, India — In November, as India’s election campaign was beginning to take shape, a catchphrase coined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) started gaining traction.

“Modi ki guarantee” (Modi’s guarantee) was positioned by the governing party as the personal promise of the vastly popular prime minister to Indian voters, as the BJP tried to draw a contrast with the seemingly hodgepodge coalition of opposition parties railing against it. The BJP launched advertisements on Google with that tagline in the third week of November.

But around the same time, another organisation started pumping in millions of rupees into an almost identical-sounding campaign: “Modi sarkar ki guarantee” (Modi government’s guarantee). The videos in that campaign, which would continue for months, often referred simply to “Modi’s guarantee”.

In one such advertisement, aired on February 23, an actor portraying a young entrepreneur reassures a father apprehensive about his son’s career choice by telling him, “Papa, there is Modi’s guarantee. Modi ji has promised that he will make India one of the places with the most unicorn startups.” Towards the end, he confidently asserts that “thanks to Modi’s guarantee, every startup will start in India”.

Only these advertisements were not from the BJP. They were paid for by the Indian taxpayer and were part of a campaign rolled out by the Indian government’s advertising agency, the Central Bureau of Communication (CBC). At least one other campaign, with multiple advertisements unveiled in March, also echoed the wording and look of the BJP’s election slogans.