There is a popular Urdu adage in Hyderabad – “Chaar Anna Murgi ko baara anna masala,” (Spending 75 paise on masala for cooking chicken costing 25 paisa).
One would recall this adage on seeing the state government advertisement on the mass download programme of Disha mobile application in Andhra Pradesh on Tuesday.
The Jagan Mohan Reddy government released full page jacket advertisements in major newspapers like Eenadu and Sakshi on the Disha mobile application mass download programme by the chief minister and his participation in the awareness programme held at village secretariat in Gollapudi on the outskirts of Vijayawada.
Though it was not officially disclosed, the cost of the full page advertisements in various editions of the major dailies and also in the electronic media is learnt to have run into a few crore rupees, as the front page advertisement tariff charged by any big newspaper is very high.
Interestingly, it cost only Rs 5 lakh to Rs 6 lakh for the Andhra Pradesh police department to get the Disha mobile application designed.
By spending a few more lakh rupees, the police department could have publicised the Disha App easily into the people.
But since the state government wanted to give extensive publicity to the application by spending crores of rupees to create awareness among the people about women’s safety.
Especially after the recent rape incident on the banks of Krishna river at Seethanagaram, the government became alert and took the decision to popularise the Disha mobile application.
So, cost of publicity is much more than the cost of the application itself!