We often come across ads in various newspapers, which is nothing new. But for quite sometime we have been seeing political ads in centre spreads. Many leaders are publishing their activities or developments or something of that sort in newspapers. Recently some news channels even telecast that chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy was using centre spread of newspapers for ads on development of his government. The channels even said that probably chief minister wanted to attract the attention of the Congress high command and that's the reason why he was doing that.

Guess what? Many programmes implemented during YS Rajashekara Reddy's regime like 108 ambulance services and Arogya Sree didn't enter the ad space of any newspaper. It was the developmental activities and good remarks of the public that worked wonder for YSR regime and brought Congress back to power in 2009. Now, Jagan's quid pro quo is a different thing, which we shall not discuss here. That was probably one alleged worst thing that took place in YSR regime. His son YSR with influence of his father cleverly played the dice but he's now behind bars facing corruption charges.

Why not concentrate on developmental activities:

The main point here is that leaders instead of depending on advertisements should concentrate more on developmental activities. For every inch of ad space in the newspaper any person should fork out in thousands and even in lakhs for quarter page advertisement. If it's centre spread, the amount will be something beyond our imagination. In fact, for two to three line classified ad itself, in metro it will be up to Rs. 1000. So, is it not the public money that leaders are using for ads? Whosoever is concentrating more on ads should now at least stop wasting public money in the name of publicity. When you do good things, people alone will hail it. You don't need to use the advertising field! It is through public that your goodness will reach!

(AW Phani)