When I first arrived in Tamil Nadu back in November, it seemed as if every square inch that could be painted with a politician’s name, slogan, or logo, was painted. In other states it tends to be cement companies that vie for the best spots not so here – at least until the last couple of weeks that is…

You see, overnight a couple of weeks ago, thousands of acres of labouriously painted signs just disappeared – Gone! Zap! As soon as the upcoming general election was announced, advertising rules kicked in and they had to go – for the sign painters of Tamil Nadu these are boom times. Although, I did manage to snap some of them before they disappeared…

You’ll probably notice a certain similarity between the signs and that’s because the bulk of the signs were for the ruling AIADMK party. That’s the party headed by former Tamil movie star and now Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, J. Jayalalithaa – commonly known as ‘Amma’ (i.e. Mother or அம்மா in Tamil).

Stay in Tamil Nadu any length of time and its impossible not to bump into ‘Amma’ every corner you turn – whether its the round the clock coverage on TV, her personalised bottles of water, children’s schoolbooks, or government planted tree saplings on the side of the street. Or at least that was the case until election officials got the paint brushes out… Just as well then, that the Chief Minister’s 66th birthday fell back at the end of February.

As befits someone with a Guinness Book of Records record to her name, this was a quiet a party. With posters and street parties the length and breadth of Tamil Nadu you did get the feeling that it was partly genuine and not entirely part of the pre-election advertising wars.

Anyway, I’ll leave it at that – the starter gun has gone on the election campaign now. With an electorate of 815 million I won’t even pretend to have half a clue of what’s going on. Someone remarked to me that its going to be like a festival every day till voting – guess I’ll just go with the flow…

Update: The New York Times today has an interesting writeup on J. Jayalalithaa (amongst others) and the role she’ll play in the upcoming government formation – http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/world/asia/coalition-building-season-in-india.html