Mumbai: Displaying 2020 vision, for the first time, the Maharashtra government has issued a calendar which the common man could call his own. In retrospect, the calendar put out last year by the Devendra Fadnavis government was a political tool, more focused on appeasing the powers-that-be at the Centre and attacking the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, given that it was the year that the assembly election was due.
However, the new calendar lists and details the public schemes launched by the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi government. Designed by the state government's directorate general of information and public relations(DGIPR), every page of the calendar is devoted to explaining the schemes of the state government aimed to benefit the common man. For January, the state government has published information about its flagship programme - the Mahatma Jyotirao Phule Loan waiver scheme for farmers and the Shiv Bhojan scheme, where the poor will get a plate of food for just Rs10. On the back of this page are details of the various schemes run by the health, social justice, animal husbandry, fisheries, agriculture, women and child development departments.
Until 2018, the calendar was published by the industry department of the state government. Remaining true to its name, it featured no more than the day and date for every month. But in 2019, keeping in mind the assembly election, the Fadnavis government decided to use the calendar to launch its campaign. Accordingly, the work of printing the calendar was taken away from the Sena's Subhash Desai-led industries department and assigned to the DGIPR, which comes under the CM's purview, with instructions that it be used as a campaign aid.
Every page of the 2019 calendar strove to prove that the Fadnavis government rule was better than the 15-year rule of the Congress and the NCP. "Facts and figures, comparing the 15-year rule of the Congress-NCP to the Fadnavis government were presented so that the public would be convinced that the Fadnavis-led government was better than the Congress-NCP. This was part of their political campaign," a senior official close to Fadnavis told The Free Press Journal.
Balancing act
For the first time in 2018, on every page of the calendar, photographs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the CM were featured prominently. The new regime too has decided to follow in the footsteps of Fadnavis and decided to publish photos. Every page has a tripartite nod -- featuring photographs of Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and Revenue Minister Balasaheb Thorat. Since the Congress did not bag the post of deputy CM, photos of their leaders are generally not published in the advertisements, along with that of the CM and his deputy. To balance this, the Thackeray government has published Thorat's picture on every page.
