Drive down the road towards Jubilee Hills check post and you will see an army of advertisement boards. But one particular board would have the undivided and enviable attention of all where half of the drivers resist the temptation to peer out of their windshields to catch a glimpse. What can be so catchy that causes many vehicles to slow down their vehicles or bike ridding youth to smile?
No need to say, it’s a striking and “daring” pose by a female model. The advertisement is not for a brand of beer or any other commercial product .Its for a newspaper. And that to a particular one which has the entire city covered with its “different” advertisement boards. Market competition has forced newspapers, which were at a time and most of them still are, a synonym for respectability and integrity, to market for newspapers as if it is another lifeless mass commodity.
Call it being modern or being with the times, it’s a shot in the arm for any avid newspaper reader who has a little bit of integrity and respect for women left inside one’s conscience. Go through the newspaper and you will find articles which should belong to volumes of Kamasutra. Take a look at the various pictures in the newspaper and you will find enough of them to create your own fantasy models photo album while wondering “Now, where did this come from?
Anyways, if they are publishing, what’s the problem then, its women liberalization”. Women liberalization? Is that what it means? It’s the need of the hour in India and gaining its own voice day by day which need not necessarily mean exploiting women in all manners. Where are the women organizations which voice so angrily, to be heard by all, acting in this respect? Are they limited for only agitating against ‘liberal minded’ movies and comments of other people?
What about the thousands of readers of that newspaper and the impact it is going to cause, not necessarily to them but at least to one of there near and dear ones? Considering the fact that any newspaper in India has the right for freedom of expression, isn’t it taking things too far to print a newspaper which the elders of the house first screen through, and then hide the additional of the newspaper from the young ones so as not to give them too much exposure because all along, every elder and responsible person realizes that this matter published, might corrupt the character of the young ones.
It makes one think about what the person is reading, whether it is a newspaper or an adult’s magazine? Has such a situation arisen that newspapers need to be graded now according to their content, with statutory warnings on the front page informing that “such and such page contains adult material. Parental advisory is recommended”.
Now the question arises that why to subscribe for a newspaper which offends one so much?
Please take a look at this, not from an individual perspective but from a general view as to what extent is the Indian public going to tolerate such kind of matter and if no one thinks that no necessary steps have to be taken in this direction, then it’s a sad case for ourselves and is understood that Indian ethical values and ones own self-respect as well as respect for women in general has died in the Indian masses.
Not all newspapers have fallen to such low levels of marketing thankfully.
Still newspapers are being published with the spirit of high class and maintaining traditional ethical integrity. But as a society, it’s necessary for us to voice against such erring newspapers and to convey the message to them to shape up before marking a black spot on the proficient and respectable industry of journalism.
Mohammed Ansaar Ali, Engineering Student (ansaar_ali@hotmail.com), Hyderabad, A.P