Kawach Television

If youve ever flipped through general entertainment channels late at night,youre probably familiar with the strange worlds of spiritual teleshopping products,inhabited by babas with photoshopped halos,who hawk gemstones in front of montages of slowly spinning planets,and Lakshmis whose palms spill digital gold. Youd also have seen the Nazar Suraksha Kawach,the evil eye amulet offered by all popular teleshopping brands,including Divyarishi,AAA,and GTM Teleshopping. The kawach,as youd have seen,is intended to repulse the envious glares of neighbours depicted dramatically as laser beams that ricochet off the amulet.

Over the past decade,as these twilight zones have proliferated across cable TV channels,Narendra Dabholkar has come to know and deplore these fraud advertisements. Based in Satara,Dabholkar,an activist of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti ANS,a movement that has denounced blind faith for 22 years,wants to get the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to ban them under the Cable and TV Network Act of 1994,for which he and his fellow rationalists in the ANS led a dharna at Azad Maidan,Mumbai,earlier this week. Due to many socio-economic factors,day-to-day life has become insecure, says Dabholkar,so people go for baba-bua-kawach. This indicates that the psyche of common people has become weak,and these advertisements make it even weaker, he says.

Dabholkars legal advisor Nirmalkumar Suryavamshi said he has advised ANS on the preliminary legal foundations of the case,and is in the process of compiling a series of clips of superstitious advertisements to discuss their case before Prasar Bharati next month. Should these clips fail to convince,hell prepare a petition for the ANS to take to court. 

For the moment,most television channels are content with running a scrolling line across these ads,which typically reads,This is paid advertisement. Viewer discretion is advised.

Despite our efforts,teleshopping brands like AAA,GTM and Telemart did not respond to our emails and phone calls. One company,Home Shop 18,when contacted,emphasised that it was a home shopping channel,not a teleshopping company selling dubious unknown brands. When asked about the yantras they sold on their website,they pointed out that these were significantly cheaper than those offered by other companies,and that they choose not to draw attention to them on their 24-hour shopping channel.

Teleshopping companies effectively combine the mystical with the methodical,and cleverly deploy a scientific lexicon to peddle their products. Can achieve 100 per cent results,promises the Maha Dhan Laxmi Yantra,offered by AAA Teleshopping,a device that claims to attract immense wealth for the buyer.

The website goes on to note that the pack contains products which are energised by renowned astrologer sic by following a proper procedure. Add a bit of blind faith,and a lot of desperation,and this yantra is just as credible as the Height Increaser,a pair of blue slippers advertised on the same teleshopping companys website,which it describes as a magical device that helps you grow taller without going for growth hormone injection,limb-lengthening operation or any type of pills.

S Govardhan,a BSNL employee in Bangalore,had the requisite admixture of faith and desperation a year ago,when he bought a Dhanalakshmi Yantra for Rs 3,400 from the Indore-based Telemart Shopping Network,which had run an advertisement on Kasturi,a 24-hour Kannada TV channel,promising that it could effortlessly attract wealth. He thought it might help him out of the financial trouble he was in a botched investment attempt a few years earlier had left him with mounting debts. But no improvement is seen, he says gloomily. They are exploiting peoples problems to make money out of them.

When he tried to return the product,as the advertisement told him he could do if he wasnt satisfied with it after 15 days,the company refused to give him his money back. The man who delivered it to me in Bangalore escaped, says Govardhan bitterly. He told us to call another branch,and that branch told us to call another branch. It was torture. The experience has,however,left his fatalism intact. Theyre bluffing,by offering us these yantras. We just buy them for our mental satisfaction, he says. But we cant prevent the doshas that were born with. We cant stop these planets influence. Their timing and rotation have to complete. Until then,we cant overcome our problems. We have to suffer.

Bal Kishan Soni,the owner of an electronics shop in Jaipur,thinks differently. A year ago,he bought the Nazar Suraksha Kawach from GTM Teleshopping for Rs 2,500 after watching an ad for it on a Hindi entertainment channel,thinking it would help improve his business. After 20 days,he concluded that it was useless. Bilkul kaam ka nahi hai, he says. Bewakoof banane-wale cheez hai. Now,whenever the teleshopping ads come on TV,his wife and two children demand that he change the channel.

Thats what Umesh Raul,a computer engineer with an MNC in Mumbai,wishes hed done when his mother asked him to get a Hanuman Raksha Kavach she spotted on a Marathi-language entertainment channel,during an ad break between two soap operas. They said,basically,that all evil things will not touch you, he says. But when he paid the company Rs 3,600,what finally got to him was a Shiv Kavach,in damaged packaging. I called the call centre many times,and nobody picked up, recalls Raul,until finally,an extra-smart lady came on the line and told me,What happens,god is god only! When I insisted that I wanted the Hanuman amulet,and the three gifts which were promised to me in the advertisement,she said I could go collect them from Bhubhaneshwar. We should beware. These companies are not genuine in the name of god.

Sirf kaanch ka tukda,is how Lokendra Singh Yadav,an insurance salesperson in Gwalior,describes the Nazar Suraksha Kavach to be after he bought it a year ago. The advertisements might proclaim it a chamatkari upaai miraculous solution but hes convinced it is a sabse third-class product,though he concedes that the advertisements themselves are psychologically effective,especially when they promise you a solution to prevent your business from deteriorating. Ask Yadav how his business is going now,and he responds,with a laugh: Badiya chal raha hai. Jis din se woh kawach phaink diya,main safal ho raha hoon. Its doing well. From the day I threw the amulet away,I have been succesful.