Lok Sabha: Printers to paint the town with political banners this poll season

The sweaty season that could potentially turn Amit Dange's Kalyan shop into a "cold war" zone is upon him. Already, the calls have started coming in and soon, the men will arrive in herds, as they usually do. Some of them will try to teach his experienced art designers how to work Photoshop and some others will ask them to manifest colours that don't exist. Invariably, almost all of these men would want their work done within a day if not yesterday because: "Seth ne bola hai".


Saying no to these visitors who carry the inevitable symptoms of election season in their self-important phones, gold bracelets and negotiating tones, isn't an option for Dange whose seven-year-old printing shop, Morya Arts, owes its reputation to churning out political banners in record time. "They are the people in power," he says. "We are just common men."

For many common men in the business of designing, printing and mounting political banners, pre-election period is a time fraught with various unsavoury prospects: catering to last-minute bulk orders, welcoming political rivals into the shop at once and bidding farewell to expectations of a full payment. For instance, having almost started work on a bulk order of banners for a political party that had apparently sent a guy with the advance payment who was nowhere to be found, a cautious Suresh Verma of Shivam Arts in Thane, has stopped approaching political parties for orders now. "I do corporates," says Verma. Dange, on his part, has sent many soft copies of fully-formed banners on whatsApp to party heads for approval only to see them rejected then and later popping up slyly on the party's social media site. This is why, a board outside his shop now reads: "WhatsApp, Email and Facebook service will be charged extra."

The commerce of printing political banners is a delicate art. Something that Thane's Chandar Pandey, the philosophical fine artist who runs the printing firm Shiva Graphics, seems to have mastered over 18 years. Sitting in his blue shop this evening, as he chisels off white radium chunks from a Chhattrapati Shivaji sticker which would soon decorate an important vehicle, 58-year-old Pandey brags in chaste Hindi: "Not a single politician has duped me of a single rupee so far." Besides the precondition of a "one-time-only online payment", what helps the GST-paying Pandey achieve this feat are two things: "Rate and service."

At Rs 5 per sq ft, this artist's banners "the cheapest in the country" where the standard rate is Rs 8 per sq ft which means clients save almost Rs 300 on each regular banner. And with a 5000-odd-member-strong team of orphaned kids, physically challenged men, underprivileged widows and housewives, producing volume overnight is not a tall order for Pandey who even dispatched banners for BSP chief Mayawati's campaign during last UP elections.

Curiously, social media has not hampered the business of printing outdoor advertising. This is not only because parties rely heavily on outdoor advertising but also because "candidates spend lavishly on all kinds of media during the

Lok Sabha elections

as they have a bigger campaigning budget," says Suresh Verma.. However, what seems to have caused a mild downfall of upto 25 per cent in revenue for these printers are increased competition and GST. "Parties tend to hire designers on a temporary basis around election time," says Manav Budhwani, a third-generation owner of Ulhasnagar's Jetha Enterprises, a 55-year-old election merchandise store that sells everything from trophies to campaign pins and is largely untouched by market vagaries.

Creatively, though, producing banners is exhausting work. "People are not always clear on what they want," says Pandey, who has not only learnt to turn ambiguous briefs of party workers into coherent images but also to draft politically, factually and grammatically correct scripts to rural parties who may want to extend their condolences in the aftermath of tragedies such as the recent terror attack in Pulwama.

Vishal Bhor of Aakar Creations in Mulundobserves that a certain professionalism has crept in to outdoor advertising. "It's not just about faces and symbols being visible anymore. Parties want to showcase their work now," says Thakkar,