By S.Narendra
(S Narendra, former Director General, DAVP & ex- Executive Director, R.K.Swamy-BBDO and
later Spokesperson, Government of India)
India’s impressive economic growth rate since the 1991
economic liberalization has attracted world -wide attention. Now most economic
commentators while referring to this development, compare India to an elephant
and the Indian establishment has come to relish this. But this was not so
initially and it required quite a push to persuade the political establishment
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The political instability prevailing
from October 1989 to 1991 in New Delhi had sent the national growth rate and
nation’s morale to southwards as never before. Reportedly, there was a considerable
flight of capital from India fearing a financial collapse. I was privileged to
have access to the internal confidential briefings given to PM and select top
leaders of the previous two governments bringing home the dire situation and
steps to save the economy. Both the governments ignored such warnings,
resulting in India having to pledge abroad its gold reserves to save its
reputation.
A
Caged Tiger: The London based Economist
weekly in its April 1991, in a special section on India, depicted it as a caged
Tiger. The Ambassador car that was ubiquitous on Indian roads in many ways
symbolized the controlled economy in which quality and competition mattered
little. It recounted the many lost economic opportunities due to inward looking
Indian policies and contrasted this with the spectacular growth rates
registered by East Asian economies like, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Hong
Kong, (as South East Asia Correspondent for five years, I had reported their progress) and even China which had opted for open
trading and investment policies. They
came to be known as ‘Tiger Economies’.
Indian policy makers wanted the Tiger branding, even while wedded to
policies of a bygone era.
New Congress Government: P.V. Narasimha Rao became prime
minister in late June 1991 and his first few statements clearly indicated that
the government had no option but to initiate drastic steps for saving the
economy. Taking such statements and the hints in the poll manifesto, I prepared
a note on a communication strategy outlining the tasks to be undertaken by
Doordarshan, AIR, DAVP, PIB and other media units of the Information and
Broadcasting ministry, in the wake of any bold policy changes and sent it to
the Secretary of the ministry. In response, I received it back with a mild
rebuff!
Meanwhile, I was summoned to attend a
meeting in Prime Minister’s Office convened by his special secretary, Surinder Singh, and attended by
officials of the finance ministry including N.K.Singh. I was asked to be ready
to launch a campaign for educating the people about the economic crisis and the
likely unpopular measures the government will take. But no one knew what those
steps were at that stage.
Having attended such meetings held
during previous governments, I was not sure that this government would bite the
bullet and, therefore, asked: “Are you sure the government would act? How much
bad news can we give the people?”
N.K. Singh shot back: “What other
alternative the government has? Work
on a publicity plan, don’t
ask questions”.
“Elephant
Unshackled”: Few persons expected Rao
and his minority government to unleash
politically heretical measures such as
drastic devaluation of the Indian rupee
by a whopping 27%, and scrapping of the Industrial
Development Regulation Act.
The 26th
of July 1991 was a red letter day, when the Indian entrepreneurial spirit won
its freedom. The announcement of abolition of IDRA by the Industry ministry
headed by prime minister Rao, came in the afternoon, taking everyone by
surprise, as it meant reversal of
Nehruvian model of economic development.
The officials in the finance and
industry ministry were very busy and did not have time for us in DAVP for
offering a brief for a communication campaign. Often in DAVP we were both an
agency as well as a client and cannot wait for the client ministry to give us a
brief. In fact, we had to wake them up to their communication needs. More often
than not, we had to scramble up a campaign overnight.
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As
I was used to this
situation, I prepared a brief for guiding my creative team and
asked them to come up with their ideas within the next few hours for releasing
advertisements and outdoor campaign as well as a folder for explaining the
significance of the government’s historic decision. When I returned to office
after dinner to look at my team’s ideas, they presented me a tiger and even a
peacock as the mascot for the campaign
that had no precedent.
I suggested that they come out with a
visual matching the tag line ‘Elepahnt
Unshackled’. We toyed with the idea of two elephants, one in chains and the
other breaking out of them, but settled for an unshackled elephant, with its
trumpeting trunk. I took a great risk by not putting the creative ideas through
the political and bureaucratic channels for approvals that would have delayed the campaign by several weeks. I
tasked my outdoor team to get to work with the creatives and put up hoardings
in New Delhi before the next evening, i.e.27th of July. This was
followed up with newspaper Ads and cinema slides. I was happy to note that
newspapers noticed the message in the hoardings, reproduced the “Unshackled Elephant” and even favourably
commented on it. I & B minister Ajit Panja complemented me for the
promptness with which DAVP had moved
the campaign.
The PMO had set up a high level
steering committee under the prime minister’s principal secretary for overseeing the roll –out of economic
reforms. The Secretary of I&B ministry was a member of this committee and
he had been asked to attend its first meeting. He suddenly remembered my note
on communication strategy for economic reforms telephoned me with a request
that I should meet him with that note. We met and prepared for the steering
committee meeting. I was co-opted as an invitee. I took the opportunity to get
the stamp of approval (post facto, of course!) of this committee for using the
elephant as the mascot and the tagline
for our communication campaign. No one paid any attention to the ad design and
passed it quietly though!
I didn’t realize then that the issue
of the mascot and the tag line was still an open issue. A few months later I
was summoned by PMO to make a presentation to the PM himself about the work we
had done and about the campaign plan for reforms agenda. (There is a separate
story about this first encounter with the PM). During the presentation, I had
showed the Ads with unshackled elephant released to media and no one offered
any comments, making me assume that the mascot and tagline had been approved.
A few days later, the PM was taking
another meeting in which several cabinet ministers were present, Out of
nowhere, the Human Resource Development minister Arjun Singh (who was expressing his opposition to PM’s economic
reforms) pointed towards me and told Narasimha Rao that I was not projecting
the reforms properly and had used the
elephant, not the tiger, as the mascot.
He further said that I should be asked to change the mascot. A major private Ad
agency working for the Education ministry , I later learnt, appears to
have brought up this idea to the
minister.
PV, without showing much reaction, asked
me to explain my position. I clarified that tiger as symbol of fast economic progress had been
over used by south east Asian nations,
As they were small compared to India and were oligarchic not democratic
like India, where processes were long.
The Prime Minister, without even batting
an eyelid, said “I agree’
I heaved a sigh of relief, as I had
taken the risk of running the campaign
for several weeks under the tagline Unshackled
Elephant, without subjecting it to the usual long-winding official
processes.
(For those interested in reading more
on how government advertising works under
severe handicaps should I recommend Pictures
in Our Mind that deals with Canadian government advertising agency, a model
adopted by India in setting up DAVP in 1950s).
