Mann ki Baat has earned 5 occasions extra income than the quantity spent on selling it, RTI reveals

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s month-to-month radio broadcast ‘Mann Ki Baat’ was one among his distinctive makes an attempt to attach with the plenty after coming to energy in May 2014.

While individuals listened to the radio often and most popular FM stations, PM Modi introduced the main target of the nation again to the nationwide broadcaster ‘All India Radio (AIR)’. ‘Mann ki Baat’ grew to become the speak of the city with its month-to-month broadcast. Scores of individuals would wait in anticipation of this system to listen to what PM Modi will discuss that month.

It wasn’t simply an expense for the nationwide broadcaster, as additionally they began incomes revenues from it. It has now come to gentle that this system fetched nearly 5 occasions in income than the quantity spent on promoting and promotions for the present.

This info was revealed in two RTI queries filed by activist Vivek Pandey. He obtained a response, from the Office of the Additional Director General concerning the year-on-year gross income generated by Mann ki Baat from 2014 to October 2022.

#RTI has revealed that PM Narendra Modi’s #MannKiBaat program earned extra income than the overall expenditure incurred to date in selling it. In which from 2014 to 2022, 5.88 crores have been spent on this, whereas 33 crores 16 lakhs income has been earned until oct 2022#NarendraModi pic.twitter.com/UPrI6mh1dn

— Vivek pandey (@Vivekpandey21) January 1, 2023

Pandey additionally obtained one other RTI response concerning the expenditure on promotions and promoting of Mann ki Baat from the Central Bureau of Communication (CBC) of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting.

While talking to OpIndia, Vivek Pandey knowledgeable that he filed the RTI queries after coming throughout media stories of ‘falling revenues’ of Mann Ki Baat between 2018 and 2021. As such, he wished to have higher readability of the total image.

“It was clear that revenues had fallen after the Covid-19 situation arose, but what the RTI reply has now shown is that there was zero, yes ZERO, amount of expenditure in the same duration to promote the Prime Minister’s show,” he emphasised.

Documents obtained from the RTI reply certainly present that there was zero expenditure on any sort of promotion in print media, tv, radio, and on digital media within the final three years.

Moreover, this expenditure didn’t go right down to zero solely within the final three years, however there was no expenditure on show ads for ‘Mann Ki Baat’ since FY 2017-18 itself.

There have been some minor expenditures on non-display promotion after 2017-18, however that too went right down to zero as per the response obtained by Vivek Pandey to his RTI question.

Screengrab of one other RTI response

As a outcome, ‘Mann Ki Baat’ has now earned 33.16 crores in revenues ever because it began airing, whereas solely round ₹7.29 cores have been spent on the promotion. Out of the mentioned quantity, solely 5.88 crores have been spent on show promoting in print.

The bulk of this expenditure was undertaken within the first 12 months of the operation, after which the officers obtained directions from the Prime Minister to not spend on the promotion of this system.

PM Modi emphasised that the target of the train was to attach with the plenty and revive AIR reasonably than promote a selected program.