Amid the controversy over the release of a Narendra Modi ‘biopic’, a web series on the prime minister’s life, and NaMo TV, the BJP has adopted more subtle strategies for invading voters’ homes and hearts.
A glance at the BJP’s YouTube channel reveals the existence of a five-part web series titled Bansi Lal ji Ka Parivar: Story of a Middle-Class Family 2014-2019. Alongside the party’s rap videos and ‘My First Vote’ online ads, it seems to be an effort to win over young voters. Short episodes, under ten minutes each, riff on the familiar dysfunctional-family sitcoms dotting the 35-year history of Hindi television, from Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi (1984) to Sarabhai vs Sarabhai (2004, 2017).
Behind this innocuous mise-en-scene lies the blatant propaganda. Bansi Lal ji and his cloyingly relatable (to upper-caste middle classes with a persecution complex) clan are a mere device through which to celebrate Modi’s promises of development.
The series follows the everyday life of a five-member household in Lucknow, headed by overworked government employee Bansi Lal. It is a typical set-up: The son studies engineering, daughter studies medicine and the mother fires barbs at her husband in their large house, complete with ornery dadi en suite.
The show is clearly aimed at an upwardly-mobile savarna electorate, the BJP’s vote bank in north India. It lays heavy emphasis on Bansi Lal’s belaboured “middle-class”ness, treating it as it were abject poverty. A Puma sock represents disenfranchisement simply because it is torn – a leap possible only in a certain Indian bourgeois imagination.
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Each episode shows how a seemingly insurmountable problem can be resolved thanks to a brilliant new scheme or intervention by the prime minister – whether or not those plans have actually been put into effect. Whether an ailing grandmother’s knee operation, or a wastrel son’s start-up ambitions – there is nothing the fictional Modi sarkar cannot address.
The dialogue is comically transparent about naming and foregrounding Modi as the family saviour. One particular sequence stands out for its earnest obtuseness: When the studious-but-ghareloo daughter is unable to get the rank required for a seat in a government medical college.
As a well-wisher asks if they’ve checked against the eligibility criteria for reservation, the hapless patriarch whimpers, “Quota..is not for people like us…”, the very picture of the oppressed. The well-wisher informs them that the government has instituted a quota for upper-caste people, and their joy knows no bounds.
In another scene, a visiting relative in the services informs them, “Ab hum ghar mein ghusenge bhi, aur ghar mein ghuske maarenge bhi (Not only will we invade homes, but also kill.”)
Published serially from April 14-18, Bansi Lal ji Ka Parivar has up to 10,000 views, not a lot by the standards of online content. One of the reasons for this might be that it wasn’t publicised at all, and would require viewers to be part of pro-BJP social media networks through which they might stumble upon it. This suggests an attempt to consolidate Modi’s appeal among an already existing constituency – the north Indian middle-class youth.
The show glorifies the government’s strides towards “development”, which has been the BJP’s buzzword for making themselves palatable to educated, upper-caste voters. Such a show as part of their campaign must also be seen alongside the raps and ads featuring young urban Indians as an attempt to offer an image that is less conservative and traditional than the one indicated by their well-known fixation with cows and temples.
For a party famous for its mass marketing, the BJP’s coyness around spreading awareness about Bansi Lal ji Ka Parivar is intriguing. The show itself follows the logic of product placement or embedded marketing, incorporating the object of advertisement into a narrative that might otherwise have nothing to do with it. Here, the product being marketed is the prime minister of the world’s largest democracy.
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Though the technique is not new in Hindi media – remember the Bournvita plugs in Koi…Mil Gaya? – this is possibly the first time it has been deployed in an election campaign. Particularly against the backdrop of the BJP’s long romance with mass media and the entertainment industry, this particular manoeuvre takes on a more sinister tint.
It is no secret that the BJP’s Lok Sabha campaign has been all about heavy branding and merchandising – turning the Modi party into a juggernaut of transmedial franchising. Late in the day, the Election Commission curbed some of these excesses by delaying the film PM Narendra Modi (2019) and web series Modi (2019) and demanding that the contents of the DTH channel, NaMo TV, be subject to vetting and certification.
Unlike the film and web series, Bansi Lal ji Ka Parivar seems to have been produced by the party, since it is only available on their official channel, making it a form of direct publicity, and thus permissible. The only time the EC’s Model Code mentions publicity is in section VII (4) to warn the party in power against advertising “at the cost of the public exchequer” and “misuse of official mass media”.
The state’s administrative apparatus hasn’t caught up with the media-savvy methods of the BJP, leaving plenty of loopholes open to be exploited. By combining the narrative entertainment of movies and TV shows with the explicit promotion of a party and its candidates that have been the mainstay of campaign ads, it seems as though perhaps the BJP has found a way to influence voters without flouting rules laid down by the EC.
The aesthetic of Bansi Lal ji Ka Parivar is a throwback to the comedy dramas of the ’90s and ’00s minus the canned laughter, but if the EC doesn’t recognise and update its regulations for this new regime of propaganda, the joke is going to be on the voters.
Kamayani Sharma is a writer and research associate with the media studies programme Sarai (CSDS), New Delhi. She tweets @SharmaKamayani.