“Wow that lady is everywhere!” said a clueless friend visiting from abroad. He had been in Kolkata for only a few hours. In that time he had spotted the many faces of Mamata Banerjee on hoardings, cutouts and even emblazoned on bus shelters, sometimes smiling, sometimes serious, but always watchful. Those of us who live here just shrug. We are used to Didi’s omnipresence by now.
But now it seems the image managers of the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal are fairly conventional in their PR strategies. Billboards and hoardings are so old school. Faith needs a stronger foundation than flex.
The Madhya Pradesh government has decided that houses built under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) will have tiles bearing images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan with the slogan “Sabka sapna, ghar ho apna.” They will also carry a picture of BJP ideologue Deendayal Upadhyay. “Through these tiles, the beneficiaries and other people will be able to know under which scheme the houses have been built,” says Manju Sharma, additional commissioner of Urban Administration Department, according to PTI.
Once Modi’s supporters were known for their battle cry ‘Har Har Modi, Ghar Ghar Modi’. Now the second half of that rousing slogan is becoming a reality, one ceramic tile at a time.
The vainglory of politicians can never be underestimated. The whole world is a shiny object which they covet and in which they see their own reflection endlessly. And they never tire of it. The Congress has tried to name anything it could after the Gandhis from the Indira Gandhi Boat Race to the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases. When the Samajwadi Party gave out free laptops in Uttar Pradesh, it came with Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav as the wallpaper. Stories went around that trying to change the wallpaper caused the laptops to crash, a rumour that had to be dispelled by UP Electronic Corporation Ltd.
Jayalalithaa’s followers photoshopped her onto billboards with Obama and Kim Jong-Un paying obeisance to Amma. Her image appeared on aid packets given to those ravaged by floods in Tamil Nadu even as her government was accused of apathy and incompetence in how they handled the disaster. A follower even put up a poster of Jayalalithaa lifting a baby above the rising flood waters, Baahubali style. After she died at the age of 68, her bereft devotees created a 68-kilo Amma idli with her face on it. It is not clear who, if anyone, ate it.
But the Modi tiles are in a league of their own. Laptops have to be replaced. Their wallpaper can be changed. Idlis get eaten, Posters fade in the sun and rain and are soon gone. But a house lasts a long time. It is often the investment of a lifetime. And the tile is on display 24×7, unlike a Modi jacket which can be put away in a closet. Every single day the house dweller and their neighbours, their friends and their kith and kin will be reminded exactly who they should be grateful to. The poor, the most vulnerable among us, apparently need to wear their gratitude and indebtedness on their sleeves or at least their tiles because they have little choice. They might not remember the klunky mouthful of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana every day but no matter. They will be reminded visually everyday whose largesse provided the makaan over their heads.
Next step – rotis with the face of the prime minister? Kapda with his name stitched on them? Oh sorry, that was a different suit altogether.
The possibilities and questions it opens up, however, are endless. For example, what if the Modi tile breaks? Will PMAY replace them? Also, where should these tiles go? What is the best place to pay due deference? Should they be outside so all those who pass by can see their government at work? Or should they be inside, perhaps in the puja room for proper veneration? Or the kitchen, so that every time we sizzle the spices we have a warm feeling about our leaders? But kitchens are risky. There’s too much grease.
In a country where we take umbrage at a Facebook post that pokes fun at the prime minister, would a dirty greasy Modi ceramic tile be taken as disrespecting his office and the man? Of course, the other room where we almost always have tiles is the bathroom. But that might not be deemed proper even though perhaps instead of taking in newspapers or smartphones the beneficiaries of PMAY could be persuaded to quietly muse on gratitude as part of a daily ritual.
Above the front door seems like a good spot from a branding perspective. It would function as a sort of neighbourhood watch, dwarpalas keeping all evil and the opposition at bay. It all begs the question of what’s next? Midday meals served on plates with the images of chief ministers smiling at you through the rice and dal? What about having the images of our leaders tattooed on the foreheads of beneficiaries of government programmes so they are reminded about maa-baap sarkar every time they look into the mirror?
Pink Floyd told us long ago in another context, we don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control. But it turns out as far as the sarkar goes, it is just another tile in the wall.
Sandip Roy is a freelance journalist based in Kolkata.