Odd one out

Talk of mixed messaging. A public service advert against female foeticide featured prominently on the website of the ministry for women and child development and was splashed across newspapers. Where would you be if your mother was not allowed to be born? it asked in bold letters,with pictures of high-flying,high-testosterone icons from Kapil Dev to Virender Sehwag and Amjad Ali Khan and then,a visual non-sequitur a moustachioed military man,who it turns out,is Pakistans retired Air Chief Marshal,Tanvir Ahmed.

To err is human,to err defiantly and brazen it out until hauled up by your boss is perhaps,typical of sarkaari functioning. The innocent,almost comical sexism of the advert aside,what makes this episode remarkable is the aftermath. After television channels inflated the matter,the PMO stepped in to apologise for the inclusion of a foreign nationals photograph in a Government of India advertisement. The Opposition jumped in,asking what dire future awaits us if our government officials and politicians do not know who our top military officers are,and extending it further,wondering what might happen if our government advertisement carries the photo of the Pakistan prime minister in the place of our prime minister. Later,the ministry and the governments Directorate of Visual Publicity lobbed responsibility at each other,saying that the ad was created by a private agency. Of course,it is unclear who actually needs to own up to their cluelessness. Krishna Tirath,the minister for women and child development,asserted: The message is more important than the image. And she blamed the media for refusing to focus on the girl childs plight. The advertising agency,in turn,might conceivably blame the internet for making the Pakistani defence chiefs picture so temptingly available.

So much blame and recrimination,over one little misplaced picture. Bloopers happen. In such perfunctory,pro-forma government messaging,they probably happen more often. But they get magnified beyond control when no one steps in on time to acknowledge them.