India, Sept. 17 -- The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is set to turn Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday into the launch pad for a nationwide outreach campaign from September 17 to mark his 25 years in public life.

Built around the idea of "seva" (service), the campaign will run till October 17 and span nearly every rung of the party and government machinery, from booth workers to chief ministers. One of its strands, "Seva Mera Yogdan", has drawn up a list of 25 service activities, from blood donation camps to tree plantation drives, and is asking citizens to pick at least one and participate.

The exercise is less a single event than a web of parallel programmes, each assigned to a different arm of the party and the state machinery. P...