Jagananna Amma Vodi, the flagship programme of the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government, was launched with a huge fanfare at Chittoor by the chief minister on Thursday.
The scheme envisages direct cash transfer of Rs 15,000 to nearly 43 lakh mothers or guardians who send their children to schools, including the government schools, aided and unaided private schools and also junior colleges.
The scheme more or less resembles Rythu Bandhu, the flagship scheme of Telangana Rashtra Samithi president and Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, launched a few months before the 2018 December assembly elections.
The Rythu Bandhu, which was aimed at paying Rs 4,000 per acre to each farmer directly into his account, reaped rich benefit to the TRS in the assembly elections.
Now, with elections to mandal parishad, zilla parishads and municipalities are on the anvil in Andhra Pradesh, Jagan is pretty confident that paying Rs 15,000 directly to each family (woman member) under Amma Vodi scheme would fetch him immense political mileage in the elections.
That is precisely why Jagan took up this scheme prestigiously and did not hesitate to divert funds from other welfare departments to this scheme.
What is more, Jagan also sought to give huge publicity to Amma Vodi scheme.
All these days, he had been very tight-fisted in releasing advertisements to the media owing to tough financial position, but of late, he has started spending on publicity.
According to sources, the Jagan government is spending Rs 10 crore on various kinds of publicity for Amma Vodi, including hoardings, bill boards, pillar boards, publicity on buses and auto-rickshaws and this publicity would continue for 10-15 days.
But on Thursday alone, the government spent huge money on advertisements to the media, newspapers and television ads. For Sakshi alone, the government is learnt to have released Rs 4 crore for carrying the advertisement in all the editions.
However, the Jagan government seems to have ignored giving advertisements to the digital media, which actually has the maximum reach to the readers of the present generation.
In fact, the visibility and response would be more for the digital media advertisements, as almost all the media houses are now turning towards this new generation media.
Hope the people in the publicity wing of the government will pay attention to this.
