The price of publicity: Uttar Pradesh's ₹6,811 crore question

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan  

In every democracy, governments have a legitimate responsibility to inform citizens about welfare schemes, public health campaigns, disaster warnings, and development initiatives. However, an equally important democratic principle is that taxpayers' money should never become a vehicle for political self-promotion.

A recent investigative report by Newslaundry, based on official government data, has reignited this debate. According to the report, the Uttar Pradesh government under Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath spent ₹6,811.94 crore on publicity and advertisements between 2017 and 2025, an average of approximately ₹2.32 crore every day. The report also states that this daily expenditure exceeds the daily averages often cited for the Union government's advertising spending during the Narendra Modi era.

If these figures accurately reflect total government publicity expenditure, they raise significant questions, not only about financial priorities but also about transparency, accountability, and the increasingly blurred line between public communication and political branding.

According to the Newslaundry investigation, of the total ₹6,811.94 crore spent between 2017 and 2025, working out to an average of roughly ₹851 crore a year, more than ₹5,658 crore, or over 83 percent, went toward visual, print, and digital publicity. The report further notes that expenditure accelerated sharply after the Covid-19 pandemic, with annual publicity spending reportedly crossing ₹1,100 crore in multiple years. The scale naturally invites scrutiny over whether this increase reflected expanded public-information needs or a broader communications strategy centred on burnishing the government's image.

Government advertising is not inherently problematic. Citizens genuinely need information about vaccination campaigns, welfare schemes, disaster preparedness, agricultural support, employment programmes, and public safety announcements. The trouble begins when government-funded campaigns prominently feature political leadership, slogans, and branding that resemble electoral promotion rather than neutral public information.

The Supreme Court of India addressed this concern in Common Cause v. Union of India (2015), holding that publicly funded advertisements should primarily educate citizens and avoid functioning as instruments of political glorification. Guidelines were framed after that judgment to limit the use of public funds for personality-centric publicity. Although those guidelines have evolved through later court orders and committee recommendations, the underlying constitutional principle remains unchanged: public money should serve public information first, not partisan advantage.

One of the most significant issues raised in the reporting is not merely the size of the spending but the difficulty of independently tracing where the money ultimately went. According to the Newslaundry investigation, efforts to obtain detailed, recipient-wise expenditure records through the Right to Information Act reportedly did not produce complete disclosures. This matters because taxpayers have legitimate questions worth answering: which media organisations received advertising revenue, what criteria governed allocation, whether allocations were proportional to audience reach, whether independent or critical media were treated differently, and how much went to digital platforms compared with traditional media. Without detailed public disclosure, it becomes difficult for citizens, researchers, and auditors to judge whether these spending decisions were objective and equitable.

Government advertising occupies a unique position in a democracy. Unlike commercial advertising, it is funded by taxpayers rather than private capital, which imposes a higher ethical standard on those who control it. Researchers have long warned that discretionary allocation of government advertising can shape media incentives, particularly where advertising revenue forms a substantial share of a publication's operating income. With the BJP in power in Uttar Pradesh, the state's daily spend has gone well beyond what is reported for Modi's own personal and party branding at the Centre.

Reports suggest that the Union government under Prime Minister Modi spends an average of approximately ₹1.5 crore a day on publicity and advertising. It has, for instance, been reported that at a recent event in Andhra Pradesh, more than 13,000 school and college students took part in performances to welcome the Prime Minister, a detail that has stirred public debate about the use of public resources for large-scale event management. Uttar Pradesh's reported average of ₹2.32 crore a day, funded by taxpayers, sits alongside this and has fed a broader debate about the scale and purpose of government communication spending. Critics argue that such levels of expenditure on publicity and events raise real concerns about the prioritisation of public funds and the need for greater transparency and accountability.

International organisations, including UNESCO and various media-freedom groups, have argued that opaque distribution of state advertising creates risks for editorial independence when allocation lacks transparent criteria. In India, though, these concerns appear to fall on deaf ears; even the opposition has been notably muted next to a dominant BJP. The worry here is structural rather than particular to any one government: state advertising should not be used to create incentives that compromise independent journalism. Many would argue that this has already happened, feeding what critics have come to call "Godi Media."

Every rupee spent on publicity is a rupee unavailable for other public priorities. While governments must communicate with citizens, these spending choices inevitably raise questions about competing needs, particularly when governance itself seems to take a back seat to self-promotion. Sectors such as government schools, primary healthcare, rural infrastructure, sanitation, nutrition programmes, teacher recruitment, public hospitals, and road maintenance arguably deserve more attention than they currently receive. A fair assessment would require examining whether this scale of communication spending has delivered public benefits commensurate with its cost.

Supporters of the Uttar Pradesh government counter that large-scale communication is simply necessary in a state of over 240 million people. They argue that awareness campaigns increase uptake of welfare schemes, that digital and multimedia outreach reaches remote populations, that publicity helps citizens understand eligibility and application procedures, and that sustained communication is essential to effective governance. These arguments have a superficial public-policy logic, but they don't hold up well under scrutiny: a government that claims to be informing citizens can just as easily be found setting its own narrative and congratulating itself even as programme participation among ordinary people fails to improve. There is also a freebie culture that has grown up around many of these schemes, one that tends to be capitalised on around election time. With elections in Uttar Pradesh next year, more such announcements from the state government seem likely, echoing the pattern already seen in Maharashtra, Bihar, and Delhi.

The central question, then, is not whether governments should advertise at all, but whether the scale, content, and execution of this advertising represent the most effective and accountable use of public resources.

Government advertising has expanded across India under successive administrations at both the Union and state levels, and this broader trend has prompted recurring debate over limits on publicity expenditure, independent oversight, transparent allocation mechanisms, disclosure of beneficiaries, and a clearer separation between public information and political messaging. Many public-finance experts have suggested that detailed annual disclosure of advertising expenditure, including recipients, campaign objectives, and outcome metrics, would strengthen public trust. Yet despite these recommendations being available to the government, little has been done to act on them.

A more constructive path forward would include the proactive publication of recipient-wise advertising expenditure, independent audits of communication campaigns, measurable evaluation of campaign effectiveness, objective media allocation criteria, periodic legislative scrutiny, and a clear distinction between informational content and personality-centric promotion. None of this would stop governments from communicating with citizens; it would simply help ensure that communication serves the public interest while reinforcing democratic accountability.

The Uttar Pradesh government's reported expenditure of ₹6,811.94 crore on advertisements over eight years is not merely a financial statistic; it is a stark indictment of misplaced priorities and the growing use of public money for political image-building. At a time when millions continue to struggle with inadequate healthcare, underfunded schools, unemployment, and crumbling civic infrastructure, diverting thousands of crores to publicity raises serious questions about governance and fiscal responsibility. Governments have a duty to inform citizens, but public communication cannot become a vehicle for self-promotion at taxpayers' expense. Every rupee spent on advertising is a rupee denied to essential public services, unless its necessity and impact are transparently justified. In a healthy democracy, governments should be judged by the quality of the public services they deliver, not by the scale of their publicity campaigns. Accountability demands complete transparency, independent audits, and rigorous public scrutiny of every advertisement funded by taxpayers.

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Mohd Ziyaullah Khan is a freelance content writer and editor based in Nagpur. He is also an activist and social entrepreneur, and co-founder of TruthScape, a team of digital activists fighting disinformation on social media