Opinion WCD’s offending ad: Not in the public interest
"The PMO has noted with regret the inclusion of a foreign national's photograph in a government of India advertisement. While an internal inquiry has been instituted,the PMO apologizes to the public for this lapse.
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“The PMO has noted with regret the inclusion of a foreign national’s photograph in a government of India advertisement. While an internal inquiry has been instituted,the PMO apologizes to the public for this lapse.
That is a shade better than Krishna Tirath’s initial,The message is more important than the image. The real motive behind this advertisement was to encourage females to become mothers and stop female foeticide. The photograph is only symbolic. We are anyway for global peace. You people (media) are creating an unnecessary issue.
Or,for that matter,Manish Tiwari’s suggestion that female foeticide is a problem in entire South Asia. Did the Ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD) not know well in advance that Sunday,January 24,was National Girl Child Day? Why did the ad have to be prepared and released at the last minute on Saturday,January 23?
Clearly,DAVP didn’t prepare the ad. It had no role in conceptualizing and design,its role was limited to releasing and perhaps not even that. Did it also have responsibility of vetting and scrutinizing? WCD and DAVP seem to have entered into a contract for four half-page ads with a private agency associated with a newspaper and ads were designed by this agency,with WCD (and the Minister) vetting and releasing ads through DAVP,without going through the I&B Ministry.
From reports,we also know this private agency wasn’t particularly knowledgeable. It didn’t know (in a draft ad that wasn’t eventually used) that Sunita Williams is not Indian. It downloaded Tanvir Mahmood Ahmed’s photograph from the Net and couldn’t distinguish an Indian uniform from a Pakistani one. Nor could WCD. To quote the Minister,It was a photo of an officer in uniform and no name was mentioned.
This was for the cause of global peace and to compensate for IPL. Don’t pictures that include the PM have to be cleared by the PMO? Why wasn’t that done? These aren’t very difficult or complicated questions to answer. Now that an inquiry has been set up under Sudhir Kumar,Additional Secretary in the WCD,why will it take 10-15 days to elicit answers? If the matter is serious (and the PMO thinks it is more serious than the WCD does),it shouldn’t take more than 10-15 minutes to figure out what happened.
That offending ad says,Issued in the public interest right at the bottom. WCD hasn’t achieved anything of note in the seven months the Minister has been in office. Its existence and funding from the public exchequer hasn’t been in the public interest. The least it can do is not to pass the buck now.
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