In Oct last year, The Wire published a story claiming that Modi government has already spent double what the UPA did on Publicity. The report states that the UPA government spent an average of Rs 504 crore rupees on advertising every year during its ten-year tenure. By contrast, over the last four-and-half years, the Narendra Modi government has spent an average of Rs 1,202 crore each year.

According to information received from the Bureau of Outreach and Communication (BOC) through a Right to Information application filed by activist Ramvir Tanwar, the amount that has been spent in propagating the schemes of the Central government from mid-2014 to September 2018 amounts to Rs 4996.61 crore. The wire claims that this amount is almost equal to Manmohan Singh government spending in the ten years.

According to a report from Factly, the amount mentioned in the report is true but it doesn't reveal the true picture.

Graph Credit: Factly

As can be seen from the graph, the amount spent on publicity has increased every year except in 2006-07, 2011-12 and 2014-15. There are a few interesting observations from this graph.

Vajpayee government spent 45 and 48 crores in 2002-03 and 2003-04 respectively. When Manmohan Singh's government came into power in 2004, the amount spent on advertisement increased by almost 3.8 times to 182 crores and the amount kept on increasing every year with an exception of 2006-07 during UPA 1.

Since data is not available for years before 2002-03, we can assume Vajpayee government spent 45 crores per year on publicity during 5-year tenure. (45 crores because the amount has increased every year. Going by the pattern we can assume that the government spent less than 45 crores per year before 2002-03).

The average amount spent per year during UPA 1 was 312.2 crores which are 6.93 times more than Vajpayee's government spending.

The average amount spent per year during UPA 2 was 696 crores which is more than double of UPA 1. 

The average amount spent per year during Modi's tenure is 1201.5 cores. The most important point to note here is that UPA 2 had spent 1036 crores in last year of their tenure (2013-14) which was 37 crores more than Modi's government spent in the first year of the tenure.

We can clearly notice that the amount spent by the government on the publicity of schemes has been increasing almost every year.

Modi government has released fewer advertisements than the UPA-2 government.

The data accessed by Deccan chronicle shows that the Modi government has released fewer advertisements than the earlier UPA-2 government. The official statistics show that while the Congress-led UPA-2 government booked approximately 52 crore sq cm of advertising space in its five-year tenure, the BJP used approximately 47 crore sq cm in its four and a half years in power. 

The Print Media, Audio Visual and outdoor publicity are three major forms of advertisement used by the government over the years. In the print media, the Modi government has released fewer advertisements than the UPA-2 government. However, we couldn't find the number of advertisements given in the other two categories (Audio Visual and outdoor).

The reason for the increase in advertisement cost  

One of the major reason can be inflation. As per a report, the average rate charged by a leading English newspaper has increased by about 35% in the last 4-5 years. Other reason can be a shift towards audio/visual and digital advertisement. It is important to mention that digital advertisement was not there 10 years back. The Modi government, in particular, has stressed a lot about the use of the digital medium to reach out to the public.

AAP’s ad expenditure is four times more than previous Congress govt: RTI

As per a report, the Arvind Kejriwal government in Delhi has spent an average of Rs 70.5 crore (till Dec 2017) against the previous Sheila Dikshit government’s average expenditure of Rs 17.4 crore in five years between 2008 and 2013. According to the DIP, the expenditure includes, among others, advertisements with photos of the chief minister and other ministers in newspapers and hoardings, commercial spots on TV and radio, and tender notices published in newspapers.

Conclusion: The wire's report comparing the average of Modi government's ad expenditure with the average of UPA's 10 years was certainly misleading as it has conveniently ignored the inflation over the last 15 years.

In the last year of its tenure, UPA 2 had spent more amount than Modi's govt expenditure in the first year.