India
Shining Lies, And
The PR Firms That Sell Them
By
Raja Swamy
21 April, 2004
countercurrents.org
The
BJP-NDAs India Shining PR campaign is a project of
the global PR giant Grey Global Group (http://www.prweek.com/thisweek/index.cfm?ID=203981).
The 7th largest PR firm in the world, Grey Globals operations
have earned notoriety in the United States on account of the activities
of its subsidiary, APCO. The website http://prwatch.org documents APCOs
activities in support of such stalwarts as Philip Morris, the tobacco
giant, the American Plastics Council, a lobbying group for the plastics
industries (plastics are derivatives of petrochemicals), and more recently,
in setting up a task force for the reconstruction
of Iraq in other words, the cornering of lucrative contracts
in an invaded third world country, for their US corporate clients. Members
of the board on this task force include political bigwigs
like Steven Solarz, and Richard Allen, the former National Security
Advisor under Ronald Reagan. Additionally, the CEO of APCO has ties
with the fundamentalist Christian Coalition, an important supporter
of the Bush administration (http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1996Q3/cohen.html).
What does this say
about the nature of the BJPs efforts to win this general election?
First, it reveals the fact that the BJP has sought help from a corporation
with an established track record of defending the indefensible. While
the real state of Indias economy teeters on the brink of all out
devastation for the vast majority of working people, particularly in
rural areas (see http://www.rupe-india.org
for a devastating analysis of the real state of Indias economy),
the BJP would like to project itself as the party that brought prosperity
to India: a classic inversion of reality! In order to do this, they
have utilized all sorts of imagery and noise, as iconic representations
of the BJPs supposed successes. Images of the artificially
kneed, and rather tiresome personality of the Prime Minister, with his
arm raised towards a glowing scenic background, are supposed to convey
a sense of immaculate power and vision an assertion neither borne
out by facts on the ground, nor even remotely echoed in the contrary
reality of grotesque Hitlerian salutes of Hindutva accompanying 5 years
of fascistic violence, murder, and destruction.
Displaying greater
loyalty to Hindutva, than to India, this Prime Minister and his cabinet
of murderously anti-poor and anti-minority fascists, have repeatedly
and brazenly assaulted the foundations of free Indias democratic
institutions, its basis in the constitution, its heritage of pluralistic
possibilities, despite all their flaws and deficiencies, and the human
and civil rights of hundreds of millions of Indias Muslim and
Christian citizens. Grey Globals PR machinery is employed to mask
this and present the Prime Minister as some sort of prophetic visionary
perched atop the dizzy clouds of false achievements. While the loot
taken from India has enabled western corporations and their domestic
clients to make a literal killing at the cost of unemployment, malnourishment,
and miserable starvation deaths throughout rural India, the managers
of state find it appropriate to wave glossy images of contentment as
if imagery and noise could mask the latter realities. It is an insult
to the intelligence of any fair-minded human being, that the author
and protagonist of the terrible genocide of Muslims in Gujarat, the
fascistic Mr. Modi, pioneered the use of the grotesquely irrelevant
term feel good factor, while addressing hordes of Indian
and NRI capitalists a few months ago (http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=47280).
Mr. Modi remains a warm host to capitalism, Indian and global
no condemnation from the U.S. government; Ambassador Blackwill, stated
that he was disturbed while the massacres took place in
2002.
Secondly, the reliance
of the BJP on Grey Globals PR skills, reveals the extent to which
the most egregious abandonment of the social development dreams of free
India, goes hand in hand with a treacherous adherence to neoliberal
led American imperialism. The BJP is firmly entrenched within a framework
of loyalty to U.S. imperialism, and its primary beneficiaries, neoliberal
capitalism. As a party that has gone beyond any other, to serve the
interests of international (and domestic lackey) capitalism, the BJP
is projected as the favorite, by domestic and global corporate
media. In addition, pro-Hindutva and neoliberal-friendly U.S. based
outfits like the OFBJP (Overseas Friends of the BJP), have dispatched
leaders and members to campaign for the BJP in India (http://in.rediff.com/election/2004/apr/13iype.htm)!
It is quite a travesty how the phrase India shining and
various permutations of it such as shining India and feel
good factor have dominated the corporate media, without any reference
to the global PR corporations responsible for them.
The Public Relations
industry itself has a fascinating history, superbly documented in Alex
Careys Taking the Risk out of Democracy (http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s97/carey.html).
The importance of generating and mobilizing consent among the working
class, towards the policies and interests of capitalism, has distinguished
the United States for half a century, from standard forms of totalitarian
control. The PR industry arose as a response of the ruling class, to
the radicalization of the American working class in the early part of
the twentieth century. Its growth and functioning drew admiration from
no less a fascist totalitarian than Hitler, who while praising Allied
propaganda techniques in World War 1, decried the crass incompetence
of German propaganda as a factor in their defeat. This admiration and
critique formed the basis for the renewed and much more effective assault
for hearts and minds by the Nazi party after it came to
power in 1933. As the former head of Hitlers propaganda film department,
Franz Hippler stated in an interview with Bill Moyers, propaganda relies
on one important technique simplification and repetition (http://www.counterpunch.org/jackson04162004.html).
The U.S. PR industry now dominates a world in which globalization
is synonymous with the expansion of U.S. imperialist power and the interests
of its corporate beneficiaries. It excels in setting up front organizations
and manipulating the perception of corporate and government actions,
in addition to selling products, brands and ideas.
Given this sordid
history, it is not at all surprising that the fascistic BJP has turned
to an American PR firm, which has an established track record of painting
toxic plastics as good for infants and nursing mothers, opposition to
giant tobacco corporations as unscientific, and the imperialistic plunder
of Iraq as reconstruction. In stark Orwellian terms, the
BJPs India Shining PR campaign is a fair equivalent
of poison is good for you style propaganda, whose roots,
like the BJPs own ideological roots, lie in a history of fascistic,
totalitarian deception and genocidal thuggery. It goes without saying
that beyond the feeling and beneath the shine
lies the disturbing truth of ugly manipulation, in the shameless service
of capitalist greed and imperialist domination, and in opposition to
the true interests of the majority of Indias people, especially
workers, peasants and all oppressed communities of India. The CEO
of Andhra Pradesh in response to farmer suicides in the countryside,
once dispatched teams of psychiatrists: to alter the perception of the
world among those responding in utter desperation to the cruel outcomes
of the very policies he and his friends fervently promote. The BJPs
Grey Global Group India Shining project takes this venality
to soaring new heights, through simplification and repetition of lies
and with a little help from their U.S. corporate friends. How appropriate:
an imperialist corporation which treats lying to people like it were
a professional science, is charged with representing the shining
performance of the BJP led NDA government! Can things get more bizarrely
blatant that this?