All and sundry came out to wish Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his 75th birthday on Wednesday.
Ministers, politicians, BJP leaders, private companies, trade associations, educational institutions – everyone paid big money for advertisements in English dailies to say ‘Happy Birthday, Modiji’.
Among the English newspapers, The Times of India led with 16 ads wishing PM Modi on his birthday. This was followed by The Indian Express with 10, Hindustan Times with nine, and The Hindu with three.
Delhi editions of four leading newspapers devoted their entire front pages to a striking, full-page advertisement placed by Chief Minister Rekha Gupta. The tagline of the ad was ‘Delhi is now on the path to become viksit, triple engine leading the way’.
Modi overshadowed a part of the headline and the advertorial, and the rest of his cutout extended to the bottom of the page, which detailed the 75 activities the Delhi government will undertake under the BJP’s Seva Pakhwada programme. This ad was seen in The Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, and The Hindu.
Maharashtra Deputy CM Eknath Shinde’s full-page birthday wishes to PM Modi were also present across the four dailies. This advertisement charts PM Modi’s journey in seven milestones – his birth in 1950, RSS pracharak in 1972, the BJP’s general secretary in Gujarat in 1987, obtaining “unprecedented success in the 1998 elections for the BJP”, the BJP’s national secretary, becoming Gujarat CM from 2001 to 2014, and the PM from 2014 to present.
Amul’s small cartoon advertisement greeting PM Modi on his birthday also featured in all four newspapers.
Some lesser-known BJP leaders, Satish Lohia and Sanjay Kakade, also greeted the PM in fawning advertisements in ToI and The Indian Express, respectively. Similarly, a not-so-popular political party from Tamil Nadu, the Indiya Jananayaka Katchi, also had a full-page birthday greeting for PM Modi in ToI.
Companies like Dalmia Bharat and Finolex were also among those that wished Modi through advertisements across the four newspapers.
Trade associations like the Society of Indian Law Firms, the Association of Manufacturers of Ayurvedic Medicines, along with the Lal Bagh Ka Raja Trust (Delhi), joined in too.
Honorable mentions
The Telegraph’s Kolkata edition had just an Amul ad that wished PM Modi on his birthday. Even next to the newspaper's horoscope section, where it had a list of people whose birthdays fall on September 17, there was no mention of Modi.
While Hindustan Times lacked in advertisements, it had its own adequate coverage of PM Modi’s life and achievements, by dedicating a centre spread and a half jacket. These were not columns, advertisements, or op-eds.
Similarly, ToI also dedicated a couple of pages just to chart the PM’s journey. Curiously, in an article titled ‘Milestones that define the Modi year’, which listed several initiatives of the BJP government like UPI, GST, and Tax Reforms, Operation Sindoor, among others, it left out the 2016 bank demonetisation. HT skipped it, too.
The New Indian Express shared an Instagram post marking the PM’s 75th birthday, with an image of Modi, calling him “The People’s Prime Minister”. The post further read that “Modi is the only PM to have spoken to the public directly 100 times through Mann Ki Baat, a radio tradition he made his own.”
This article was originally published in the Newslaundry and can be accessed here.