Amitabh Bachchan

Lucknow, Dec. 14: If Amitabh Bachchan is born again, he would like to be born on the Ganga’s ghats.

The actor has been announcing this on prime time television every day in an ad film that describes Uttar Pradesh as the land of hope.

The ad ends with a message: it is commissioned by the ruling Samajwadi Party.

Scripted by adman Piyush Pandey and shot in Varanasi by Shoojit Sircar of the Cadbury’s ad fame — including “Miss Palampur” — it is a hit, according to the Samajwadis. “It has caused a miracle already. People wait for the small ad piece and the image is there to stay,” says B.P. Verma, MP and former minister.

Often, however, it is followed by news bulletins that do not seem to agree with the rosy picture of Uttar Pradesh the ad paints.

Ankit, 13, is kidnapped when he is out playing cricket and murdered, another child, this time 11, is kidnapped and a ransom of Rs 10 lakh sought, Lucknow University is shut down because of student violence — the bad news does not seem to end.

With Assembly elections only months away, the Mulayam Singh Yadav government has to go all out to hardsell its achievements. Unlike the “Pappu pass ho gaya” Cadbury ad also shot by Shoojit, Bachchan does not say here: “Mulayam pass ho gaya”.

But he does mouth other slogans that suit the Samajwadi propaganda machine. Slogans that do not agree with statistics put out by the government’s own agencies. For example, 29.2 per cent of the state’s population — 48.8 million — live under the poverty line, according to the Uttar Pradesh Planning Department-World Bank report dated June 2006.

The same report puts the state’s literacy level at 57.36 per cent against the national average of 65 per cent. The female literacy rate is 43 per cent — lower than all other states except Bihar, it adds.

The infant mortality rate is as bad: 80 deaths per 1,000. “Where is the scope of sunrise and a wind of change in this encircling gloom?” asks state Congress vice-president Satyadev Tripathi.

He does not blame Bachchan, but the “director” — the actor’s close friend and Samajwadi general secretary Amar Singh who is the brain behind the ad.

Jayalalithaa gesture

Jayalalithaa has said she will “most probably” campaign for the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh. The move comes in response to a request made by Mulayam Singh Yadav to her when they were in Delhi recently.