Opposite a private hospital on the Avarampalayam Road, Prime Minister Narendra Modi looks at passersby from a bus shelter advertisement where the message he wants to convey is in Hindi.

The advertisement which also has a photograph of a girl with a glowing bulb says that the country is changing for the better and the pace of growth has picked up.

It further says that 68 years after Independence, 18,452 villages remain in darkness (without power connection). All those villages will get power connection within 1,000 days and thus far power supply has reached 7,700 of those.

But many passersby do not stop to have a second look at it or care to read, as the message is in Hindi. A commuter on condition of anonymity says it means very little to people like him, who only understand that the message is in Hindi.

On Tuesday, the Bharatiya Janata Party conducted a programme for its workers in Coimbatore to explain the Central Government’s two years’ achievements.

It flew Union Minister of State of Environment, Forests and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar, whose speech a local leader translated.

But the party did nothing to carry the message of a video clipping it played. The audience was distracted and the leaders unease, for they got the message.

A senior State leader of the party says that she has conveyed it to the party headquarters in New Delhi and Union Ministers that messages to people in Tamil Nadu ought to be in Tamil, as Tamil Nadu is a ‘language sensitive State’.

Sometime ago, when a similar problem cropped up regarding a Central Government advertisements, the State leaders got in touch with Mr. Javadekar, who was then in charge of Information and Broadcasting, to translate print advertisements in Tamil and have a Tamil voice over for television advertisements.

Feedback

The leader says for party advertisements that are in Hindi, they are able to reach across to leaders in no time to get things corrected, but for Government publicity material, it is difficult because of the bureaucracy. And, before the feedback is translated into action, precious time is lost.

Swachh Bharat publicity message is a case in point, the leader points out.

G.K. Nagaraj of the Kongunadu Jananayaka Katchi, a BJP ally, says advertising in Hindi will alienate the party from the rural voters and give a stick to the opposition parties to beat the BJP.

Another BJP leader says Hindi advertisements are negative publicity and is not desirable in Tamil Nadu.

The leaders say that they have reached out to the party leaders and ministers to replace Hindi with Tamil in all advertisements and that too at the earliest.