BackOf election coverage and ‘Star Wars’
Luxury hotel chains are offering special tariffs to journalists staying in their properties for coverage of the elections
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After tour operators offered special vacations centred on the Indian election to foreign tourists, can five-star hotels be far behind?
Luxury hotel chains such as the Taj in New Delhi are offering special tariffs to journalists staying in their properties for coverage of the general election that gets under way on 7 April. The special package is valid from 1 April to 31 May and can be availed of on the presentation of a media card.
Interestingly, the offer covers only the National Capital Region centred on the Indian capital, while the road to power in Delhi comes via Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which together send 120 representatives to the Lok Sabha.
Many who have covered general elections in the past would tell you how tough it is to get decent accommodation in the country’s cow belt, including the Bihar capital Patna, which has been continuously inhabited since 490 BC, but still doesn’t have a five-star hotel.
Nothing much has changed since the days of Megasthenes, ambassador to the court of Chandragupta Maurya, say many diplomats who are travelling to the ancient city to file reports for their foreign office back home. Patna’s lack of a star hotel may be a throwback to the days of Chanakya—to discourage foreign interest in the city.
Perhaps to leverage the Western press’s fascination with Delhi’s 49-day wonder, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the Taj offer also extends to its property in Gurgaon, from where AAP’s key strategist Yogendra Yadav is contesting. Maybe the next target group for hospitality chains will be the government officials from new democracies and countries from Africa, Asia and the Middle East—particularly from those countries swept by the Arab spring who want to be present as observers when the world’s largest democracy goes to the polls.
Indian general election has always fascinated the Western press, given the country’s continuing engagement with democracy despite problems—both internal and external. In their quest to capture the colour for their stories in the heat and dust of the Indian countryside, the international press is descending to Delhi to get a taste of how the electorate—roughly three times the population of the US—will exercise its adult franchisee.
The 16th Lok Sabha elections will see 814 million people casting their votes using 1.7 million electronic voting machines, across 930,000 polling stations to elect 543 representatives. Around 120 million of these voters will be exercising their franchise for the first time.
More from on the campaign trail
Many believe that the interest in covering Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s electoral contest from Varanasi also stems from the fact that the city, in the past known as Benares, apart from having several star property options, also offers a sundowner—something a Vadodara can’t match. If only the domestic reporters could be granted such a luxury!
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