ADVERTISEMENT BY GOVT. AGENCY AND GOVT RESPONSE

In this commercial world, people often get carried away by the advertisements. Quite often, we see products being endorsed by cine and sports icon and the market sales queering up. This form of communication in print and electronic media is a multi crore industry. The Advt. usually includes the name of the product or service and how it would be of service or benefit to the consumer. By branding and repeatedly flashing them on screen, Companies create an image that the product is far superior that others without having any scientific base to that claim.
While MNCs make money, the Prime Minsiter’s Office is embroiled in an controversy and had to apologise on a full page advertisement issued by the Women & Child Development Ministry. An internal inquiry stands ordered into the lapse.  "The Prime Minister's Office has noted with regret the inclusion of a foreign national's photograph in a Government of India advertisement," the media adviser to the prime minister said in a statement.


The advt. reading "Where would you be if your mother was not allowed to be born?" - issued by the government's Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) for the ministry on the occasion of National Girl Child Day had inexplicably included the photograph of former Air Chief Marshal Tanvir Ahmed, who was Pakistan's air chief 2006-2009, along with such national heroes as Kapil Dev, Virender Sehwag and Amjad Ali Khan. Ahmed had retired from PAF on March 18, 2009. With television channels playing it up, the government quickly ordered a probe into the faux pas.

But an unrepentant minister for women and child development Krishna Tirath defiantly refused to accept the blunder and accused the media of hair-splitting. She said the "message is more important than the image. The photograph is only symbolic. The message for the girl child is more important. She should be protected." She also claimed that the DAVP looks at advertisements minutely before release and that it was a photo of an officer in uniform and no name was mentioned.


Certainly we do not need any PAF Officer when we have meritorious and more handsome senior officers in IAF and other services. They could easily have used the photo of any of our Army Chiefs. Some say that this was a case of mistaken identity trying to place the photo of Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore of the Indian Army.
This certainly is a shame on the authorities and some head at a lower level would roll for this, whilst everybody else would go scot free and everything forgotten in a few days.


With regards – S Sampathkumar.