You don't need goddess Kangana Ranaut to sell Swachh Bharat to India
I just happened to watch the much-shared Swachh Bharat campaign video, starring actress Kangana Ranaut, and was wondering why drag poor goddess Lakshmi, allegedly the giver of wealth and prosperity, to drive home the basic premise that cleanliness is next to godliness?
That too via such a garish and extravagant video, that must end with none other than the usual voiceover by Amitabh Bachchan?
I mean spitting and peeing in public spaces, littering the roads, scribbling on national monuments, throwing garbage onto the street or into the neighbour's compound and making your pet pee and defecate in a neighbourhood park, have frankly nothing to do with divinity, since they constitute common civic sense.
It just goes on to show how little we as a people care about our Bharat Mata and also each other, as ordinary citizens.
Also, what's with Kangana portrayed as a sexy, curly-haired, dolled up and glamorous Lakshmi? I feel it is utterly sexist.
How will a Bollywood personification of the usually rotund and matronly goddess lead us to cleaning up our act?
I can't help question why always the slanted reference to a goddess when it comes to delivering a public service message - and why must her portrayal always be as a nubile woman, oozing sexuality?
What kind of consciousness must be based on divine preaching and why must we always need to be corrected into righteousness via a religious route?
Why not Lord Indra or Vishnu then - hairy, pot-bellied, sprouting a bushy moustache or maybe, muscular, toned, six pack abs and sporting a bejewelled crown on their heads?
Is the Lakshmi intervention purely meant to titillate the end consumer and endorse a strong brand message, more so as Ranaut is currently the hottest property in B-town, and also because this is India where - be it spirituality, road safety or polio vaccination - celebs, and inversely sex appeal and star power, sell and how!
I can't help wonder if the ad that is viral on the internet, thanks to its starry-eyed entourage, will have any effect on the grim reality that confronts us every day.
This includes the rapid burning of fuelwood and biomass, absence of organized garbage and waste removal services, lack of water drainage and sewage treatment systems, diversion of consumer waste into rivers, cremation practises near major water bodies, polluting vehicles and operation of government-owned, high-emission plants.
While the much-publicised Incredible India tourism campaign, starring Aamir Khan, tried to sell the oft-used line, again with a holy inference - Atithi Devo Bhava - the ground reality is that tourist inflow, in the Capital alone, has slipped, according to a report released recently by the Union tourism ministry and the Delhi Police.
Delhi's tourism officials also revealed that after the Uber rape incident, the number of foreign tourists travelling to Delhi dwindled by 30-40 per cent.
And while we are still on the sacred, what about the rot rampant in our minds, the larger malaise plaguing civil society - the recent incident in Gurgaon of a four-year-old child molested by a 21-year-old attendant inside a school bus that flouted rules openly, operating without CCTVs or the watchful presence of a teacher/validated attendant. The is just one in many similar cases.
Which omnipotent goddess protects the girl child in India, a nation where, according to a statement by Louis-Georges Arsenault, UNICEF's representative in the country, one in three rape victims is a child.
More than 7,200 children, including infants, are raped here annually, and these are only the cases that are reported.
Does cleanliness of the environment not also include moral integrity and the strictest legal punishment for perpetrators of child sexual abuse?
Does swachhata not call for clean up of sexual perversion and violence of the most inhumane kind?
Can using Bollywood stars and splurging taxpayers' money on cleanliness campaigns camouflage who we are, when we aren't prostrating ourselves before a distant goddess?