The mission of the government's directorate of advertising and visual publicity is laid out in clear terms on its website: "To communicate important social advertising messages in an effective manner, to empower the lives of the country's citizens".
Under that mandate, it would be reasonable to expect an advertising blitz by the health ministry explaining matters of child-nutrition to India's new mothers, perhaps, or information notices by the agriculture ministry about revolutionary new irrigation techniques.
As it turns out, the department with the highest spending on print media advertising is the defence ministry. Over the last six months, its expenditure has been Rs 14 crore. In number two position is the ministry of finance, which spent close to Rs. 6 crore on 12,47,696 square centimetres of print ads during that period.
It isn't as if each ministry got the same bang for their buck. While the ministry for external affairs spent Rs 238 for every square centimeter, the ministry of minority affairs got a much cheaper deal at only Rs. 31 for the same amount of space in the newspapers. The graph below reveals the ministries which spent the most per square centimeter.
Earlier this week, a committee appointed by the Supreme Court to curb unnecessary expenditure on advertising recommended that names and pictures of political parties and their office bearers be avoided in government advertisements. It criticised the "arbitrary use of public funds for advertising... to project particular personalities, parties or governments without any attendant public interest".
The Supreme Court will review the panel's recommendations. But it isn't clear whether it will be able to reverse the pattern observed on this chart of print-ad spending by government departments over the last five years.
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Under that mandate, it would be reasonable to expect an advertising blitz by the health ministry explaining matters of child-nutrition to India's new mothers, perhaps, or information notices by the agriculture ministry about revolutionary new irrigation techniques.
As it turns out, the department with the highest spending on print media advertising is the defence ministry. Over the last six months, its expenditure has been Rs 14 crore. In number two position is the ministry of finance, which spent close to Rs. 6 crore on 12,47,696 square centimetres of print ads during that period.
It isn't as if each ministry got the same bang for their buck. While the ministry for external affairs spent Rs 238 for every square centimeter, the ministry of minority affairs got a much cheaper deal at only Rs. 31 for the same amount of space in the newspapers. The graph below reveals the ministries which spent the most per square centimeter.
Earlier this week, a committee appointed by the Supreme Court to curb unnecessary expenditure on advertising recommended that names and pictures of political parties and their office bearers be avoided in government advertisements. It criticised the "arbitrary use of public funds for advertising... to project particular personalities, parties or governments without any attendant public interest".
The Supreme Court will review the panel's recommendations. But it isn't clear whether it will be able to reverse the pattern observed on this chart of print-ad spending by government departments over the last five years.
