<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>Weeks before India heads into a two-month-long election with nearly a billion voters, political party merchandise and flag makers are expanding operations and working overtime to meet a surge in demand.</b></span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ahead of the first voting day of the seven-phase election on April 19, garment makers are temporarily converting factories where they usually make saris into production hubs for election flags and banners.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One such factory owner, Mukesh Agarwal, said there are as many as 40 similar factories in Mathura, a temple town in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state and a key political battleground.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“The cheapest and best items used for political campaigns are banners and flags,” Agarwal said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Election merchandise is a low-margin, high-volume business, where the price of a party badge can start from 1 rupee ($0.01).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Agarwal said some factories can produce a million flags a day if demand continues to increase.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">During an election, India is plastered with posters from hundreds of political parties and thousands of candidates.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“As many people have little education, party workers use flags to promote their symbols and hang them outside houses and make them the medium of their campaigns,” Agarwal said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A textile hub in Surat, in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, is the center of election merchandise along with several smaller hot spots like Mathura in the north and Hyderabad in the south.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Elections give the economy a boost as political parties spend on goods and services as varied as small merchandise and helicopter rental.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Gulshan Khurana, general secretary of a traders association in Delhi’s Sadar Bazar market, said political parties spend 30 billion to 50 billion rupees on election merchandise, creating as many as 10 million jobs.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Khurana, who has been a market trader for nearly 50 years, said there has been a nearly 30 percent increase in business compared with the last election in 2019, when Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party spent a record sum to retain power.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">An opinion poll last week predicted an easy win for a Modi-backed coalition. Opposition politician Rahul Gandhi of the Indian National Congress said at the Friday release of his party’s manifesto that the election is “much closer than being propagated.” - Reuters&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/fas</div>