On raths and cycles, ‘ Gaon gaon Akhilesh’ campaign rolls on
LUCKNOW: That chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, and not Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, will be the ruling party’s mascot for 2017 assembly elections got confirmed yet again on Sunday.
The occasion was launch of party’s rural connect campaign, which has been named as ‘Gaon gaon Akhilesh’.
A fortnight ago when the party launched its 2017 song, it was titled ‘Pragati ka shri Ganesh, Akhilesh.’
On Sunday, a total of 12 motorised ‘rath (chariot)’ set out for Gorakhpur, Faizabad and Agra in the first phase.
The raths would camp in 600 villages by turn and screen a series of short films on Akhilesh’s government and party’s achievements, policies and philosophies.
Batches of party workers would accompany each rath.
The workers have been asked to strike dialogues with villagers in each village where the rath take a stopover.
“The workers would interact with villagers over government’s work. They would listen to villagers, seek feedback on his government. The rath would also distribute brochures and booklets on government’s achievements,” said state spokesperson Rajendra Chowdhury soon after flagging off the 12 raths.
Chowdhary, who is also a minister, was present with another minister Arvind Singh Gope and an MLC SRS Yadav.
Batches of workers on bicycles, which is also party’s symbol, would accompany the raths. The identical raths are custom designed for the ‘Gaon gaon Akhilesh’ campaign. Each rath has an LED screen backed up with audio-video system.
The 2017 song does not men- tion either ‘Samajwadi Party’ or ‘Mulayam’ even once, and quite similarly all pictures on the rath are Akhilesh focused.
The song has been sung and composed by Bollywood singercomposer Javed Ali, who had also sang the 2012 song ‘Yeh Samajwadi jhandaa’ (which eventually became the party’s anthem) and the 2014 ‘Maan se hai Mulayam, Iraadey loha hain’.
Party man and Hindi Sansthan chairperson Udai Pratap Singh, who wrote the lyrics for the previous two songs, has penned this one too.
Though the song has not been officially released yet, the raths would play the song all along.
Akhilesh was the architect for the party 2012 victory with his Kranti Rath campaign and reorganization of party’s youth cadre, but he never was party’s mascot.
He had become SP’s state president in 2009. By 2011, he re-modeled several aspects of the party organisation. He hired professionals, IT experts, management specialists, et al to do party branding.
He is the one who introduced a dress code in the party, elegantly done up print and video advertisement, and brought in the culture of creating proper songs and anthems for the party.
Before this, the party largely used shabbily sung parodies on Bollywood hit numbers of those days.
The new song that talks about Akhilesh and his government’s work goes like this: ‘UP ko pragati ke path pe, hai yakeen tum laaogey; Har iccha aur har sapna poora kar dikhlaaogey. Ghar-aangan tum se badlega, sutradhaar tum parivartan ke, samriddhi ke tum paryaye.’
So far as the raths are concerned, the driver, co-driver and all the cyclists have a ‘designer’ uniform and dress code to stick to during the campaign. They all have white kurtas with collar. The collar, pocket and hem of the sleeves have party colour (red-green) stripes and red caps.