বাংলায় পড়ুন
As soon as the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced poll dates for the forthcoming Lok Sabha election and parties started naming their candidates, the age-old way of campaigning through wall writing had begun and this year, popular cartoon characters have taken a front seat.
At some places, Chhota Bheem is seen chanting election slogans while at other places Motu Patlu have been given faces of national leaders. So far only Trinamool Congress has announced their candidates and thus their wall writings are in plenty. Other political parties have not named their candidates and thus have only started occupying walls with poll slogans with the help of cartoon characters.
At the end, however, it all boils down to entertainment for the people in general. Passers-by are seen stopping at these stops for a minute or two to read the messages or look at the cartoons. Many were seen taking pictures or selfies at different spots of the city and post those on social networking sites.
Political parties had already understood the pulse of people in terms of cartoon characters and thus, in advance had hired professional hands to do impressive jobs. They have realised that simple messages such as ‘Vote for such and such candidates’ will not attract eyeballs anymore and in the present tech-age they wall writings too will have to be smarter to compete with smartphones and social media.
Attention span of people have shrunk further with the advent of smartphones they hardly look anywhere else. So we have to come up with innovations to divert their attention in competition with digital campaigninig,
said a senior TMC leader. He added that previously only the success of one party and the failures of the other were written in bullet points on walls but it was noticed that people hardly stood to read those but after the advent of these cartoon reliefs within the otherwise drab texts, even youngsters have taken interest in reading messages that are written on walls.
As the poll dates come closer, it is expected that campaigning too will get more fierce and people will inevitably get the taste of different ideas as far as wall writing is concerned.
