Sunday, June 22, 2008

WHAT AN IDEA !!

It was a little tough for me to decide a topic which could continue the CnC style and at the same time do justice to the strong message conveyed by PJ in his previous post.
A few ideas came in but then I decided to wait a little longer until I found this one, and now I leave it for you to decide if this serves as an apt succession.
Even I am one of those who proudly call themselves as modern Indians and some of my friends go a step further and call themselves global citizens. The important thing for us to understand here is that we should realise that whenever we call ourselves by such titles we are also acting as a representative of union of a highly diversified society consisting of people from different castes, creeds, gender, religions, and colours.
But unfortunately, to create niche vote banks our political parties always promote divides, especially before elections. I needn’t start talking about Gujjar issue (caste based reservation) which just concluded, nor do I need to say much about Raj Thakre (promoting regionalism at the heart of Indian’s Commercial capital), Chandrasekhar Rao demanding formation of Telengana, Ghisingh seeking Gurkhaland and now Mr. Bal Thakre calling for the formation of Hindu suicide squads (religious divide) to protect themselves from minority aggressions. This is not all; every party selects a theme, even the bigger ones; remember last year Congress won many hearts with their Aam Admi slogan while BJP failed to impress everyone with their Indian Shinning Campaign.
Now its time for elections once again and I am worried that these powerful entities of Indian society might come up with more baseless promises and might divide the country even more on different grounds just for getting greater votes. And the most important aspect of national integration takes a set back.
But at the same time I think a good solution to this is also catching on our TV screens. Generally I am one of those to make sure that they surf through different channels whenever the TV programs are on commercials breaks. I don’t know how but yesterday I happened to notice an ad from IDEA mobile network where Abhishek Bachchan solves a feud by asking villages not to identify themselves by their surnames and instead use their 10 digit mobile numbers. All the villagers follow the words of their Sarpanch and live peacefully, even the names of roads get replaced by mobile numbers. To conclude a fellow villager comes to Junior B and acclaims “What an Idea Sirji”. And I could quite agree with it.

At a time when the country is heading to unnecessary discrimination, I found this ad very interesting. I was so very impressed that now I found the creative brain behind it. This ad is from an Ad Agency called Lowe India. This agency has had always tried to promote nation building messages through their ads. You might be able to recollect a few – Lifebouy (small kids cleaning their colony); Surf Excel (people saving 2 buckets of water and donating it) and the most recent Tata Tea (anti corruption campaign called Jaago Re!!)..
So if required once day this Ad might turnout to be a solution to most of frictions we face within our country. So it up to us to act matured and not getting carried away by the political gimmicks or else we might end up addressing each other by 10-digit codes. No Patels, No Khans, No Kapoors, No Singhs, only numbers will be the Kin(n)g.

2 comments:

Si_Lee said...

Well the way i see it ppl stick to this caste thong mostly for their selfish interest nw a days .. as life is easier and not out of pride .. see a SC declaring he is one in public ?? no .. only wen he wants a job or admission else he wants to be like any other man... I apprecite ur view man .. but if tht day comes so will exist utopia...

Harsha said...

well the idea behind the post was to bring out sarcasm, it would be the worst day in Indian histroy when we would all think of changing (be it wilfully or by force) names to numbers. So even i sencerely pray that the day doesnt come. Bt the increasing discrimination - regionalism, casteism, racism, is what worries and me..