The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is set to turn Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday into the launch pad for a nationwide outreach campaign from September 17 to mark his 25 years in public life.
The exercise is less a single event than a web of parallel programmes, each assigned to a different arm of the party and the state machinery. Party workers, government departments, schools, Anganwadi centres, digital influencers, NGOs and elected representatives have all been roped in, with nodal officers appointed at the block, district and state levels to monitor how each component is implemented. The instruction points to a conscious effort to present the drive as a governance initiative rather than a personality-led one, though the timing itself will hardly go unnoticed. Digital creators occupy a bigger role in the campaign this time than in past BJP drives. Stripped of its many names and hashtags, what emerges is essentially a coordinated public outreach exercise running for a month, bringing together party workers, beneficiaries, schools, Anganwadi centres, influencers, digital creators, local artists, NGOs, public representatives and government departments under one umbrella.
Built around the idea of “seva” (service), the campaign will run till October 17 and span nearly every rung of the party and government machinery, from booth workers to chief ministers. One of its strands, “Seva Mera Yogdan”, has drawn up a list of 25 service activities, from blood donation camps to tree plantation drives, and is asking citizens to pick at least one and participate. Interestingly, party circulars have asked state education departments to frame their official communication around “Viksit Bharat Sankalp” and “25 years of service work”, while avoiding any direct mention of the PM’s birthday, even as the campaign’s start date coincides with it. Central to the campaign is “Kahani Badlav Ki”, under which party workers will fan out to record the real stories of 2.5 million citizens whose lives, the party says, have changed through government schemes. Under the “ Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra”, between 300 and 500 influencers and content creators will be taken to sites the party sees as proof of visible change, from the changed security situation in Bastar to Gujarat’s GIFT City and innovation hubs such as iCreate.
The plan includes a mass rendition of all six stanzas of Vande Mataram, aimed at a Guinness World Records attempt, followed by a formal resolution and an address by the Prime Minister.
The month builds up to a grand finale on October 17, the “Jansevak Mahakumbh”, where around 125,000 sarpanches (village heads) and other public representatives are expected to gather across Delhi, Gurugram, Ghaziabad, Surajkund and Varanasi.
