Delhi’s electoral landscape remains unique in the country, because of its particular mix of cosmopolitan residents and a general lack of parochial concerns. So while candidates are still selected based on community and identity, the issues that tend to be brought up in election campaigns tend to be primarily policy-based.
That’s why a quick ride on a bus around the city will lead you to lots of hoardings and posters that are talking about electricity and water. And not just general promises of making them cheaper, but specific numbers on how your bill will be different if one particular party comes to power.
This is partly a result of the Aam Aadmi Party’s campaign from December 2013, when its leaders spoke of electricity and water bills being a “scam” for Delhi’s residents, just like all the other scams that had turned up over the previous years. One of the chief planks on which the AAP’s campaign rested was a promise to audit the inner workings of the electricity distribution companies, while simultaneously halving electricity bills.
Now, all three parties are talking about electricity and water, as opposed to just broader ideas of “development” that the Bharatiya Janata Party has resorted to elsewhere or that the Congress used to stick to during Sheila Dikshit’s tenure.
But that too can only go so far. At some point the parties are just offering the people freebies or the numbers are getting so complex that no passerby is actually going to get anything from it. An overuse of numbers naturally gets people suspicious of all figures, so while each one of the parties might be promising the best possible deal, these ads are unlikely to be persuasive.
The BJP realising this, and the murmurs of discontent about their chief ministerial candidate, decided to unleash a negative ad blitz. Using cartoon caricatures of their opponents, the ads portrayed everything from the AAP and Congress allegedly being hand in hand to Kejriwal coveting a government bungalow.
Each of these has generated controversy, albeit not only in the way the BJP would want them to, since the most recent one has raked up questions about whether the saffron party was casteist in the ad copy.
This is not to say that the BJP is the only party going negative with its campaigning. The AAP in fact kicked off matters with its classic auto ads, showing Kejriwal’s face with the word imaandar (trustworthy) under his name, next to a picture of Kiran Bedi with avsarvadi (opportunistic) under hers.
The Congress meanwhile, have attempted to also stay in the game. Although most of their public advertising has focused on promises of freebies or cheaper electricity, online the party has sought to portray each of its opponents as power-hungry hypocrites.
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That’s why a quick ride on a bus around the city will lead you to lots of hoardings and posters that are talking about electricity and water. And not just general promises of making them cheaper, but specific numbers on how your bill will be different if one particular party comes to power.
This is partly a result of the Aam Aadmi Party’s campaign from December 2013, when its leaders spoke of electricity and water bills being a “scam” for Delhi’s residents, just like all the other scams that had turned up over the previous years. One of the chief planks on which the AAP’s campaign rested was a promise to audit the inner workings of the electricity distribution companies, while simultaneously halving electricity bills.
Now, all three parties are talking about electricity and water, as opposed to just broader ideas of “development” that the Bharatiya Janata Party has resorted to elsewhere or that the Congress used to stick to during Sheila Dikshit’s tenure.
But that too can only go so far. At some point the parties are just offering the people freebies or the numbers are getting so complex that no passerby is actually going to get anything from it. An overuse of numbers naturally gets people suspicious of all figures, so while each one of the parties might be promising the best possible deal, these ads are unlikely to be persuasive.
The BJP realising this, and the murmurs of discontent about their chief ministerial candidate, decided to unleash a negative ad blitz. Using cartoon caricatures of their opponents, the ads portrayed everything from the AAP and Congress allegedly being hand in hand to Kejriwal coveting a government bungalow.
Each of these has generated controversy, albeit not only in the way the BJP would want them to, since the most recent one has raked up questions about whether the saffron party was casteist in the ad copy.
This is not to say that the BJP is the only party going negative with its campaigning. The AAP in fact kicked off matters with its classic auto ads, showing Kejriwal’s face with the word imaandar (trustworthy) under his name, next to a picture of Kiran Bedi with avsarvadi (opportunistic) under hers.
The Congress meanwhile, have attempted to also stay in the game. Although most of their public advertising has focused on promises of freebies or cheaper electricity, online the party has sought to portray each of its opponents as power-hungry hypocrites.
