Mar 31 2016 : The Times of India (Chennai)
Fanning the fire: Why the Havells anti-reservation ad got everyone winded
Amulya Gopalakrishnan
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Havells, an electrical appliances company , thought it had hit the “empowerment“ sweet spot with its Hawa Badlegi ads. It sold steam irons and mixer grinders while talking of respect for women and old people and domestic workers, and these ads warmed the hearts of many middle-class watchers.But it may just have learnt the limits of patronising the powerless in the name of empowerment. Its latest ceiling fan ad showed a young woman refusing a form marked “quota“ that her father picks up for her. Its revolutionary logic giving up reservations makes you truly meritorious. This new, “apne dum par“ generation doesn't need any ladders, and it shuns angry , sapping student politics, says the ad.
After an outcry led by Dalit-Bahujan voices and allies, Havells pulled the ad, with a weak “we don't want to hurt anyone's sentiments“. But this ad was a clear provocation, given the gale blowing across the country right now. To make little of caste discrimination on campus and student politics, even as Hyderabad Central University is boiling over, is as deliberate a statement as it gets.
The ad may have been withdrawn, but the argument is still raging. Now, there are valid quibbles about the bluntness of quotas, but their advantage is that they are simple and easy to enforce. They are emphatically not special favours. If you looked at the population, and the legitimate share that social groups should have in education, you'd see how hard it is for Dalits and OBCs to cross each educational threshold. Anyone in the “general“ category can plainly see that they are, in fact, the minority with a megaphone.
Quotas are clearly not enough for social mobility , though; it takes a lot more to dismantle caste inequality and prejudice. In fact, appearing to make education accessible without actually doing it sustains the status quo; it disguises social hierarchies as academic hierarchies.
Some, defending the Havells ad, asked why young people shouldn't have the confidence to give up crutches and concessions. In other words, their own inherited privileges are okay, but reservations must be vacated by better-off Dalits and OBCs to make place for others.
They wouldn't dream of depriving their children of special tuition or other advantages, but any shaky foothold in the interest of social justice is considered shameful.
This is, of course, an all-too familiar debate, and no minds are being changed by any commercials.
Advertising, in its essence, is meant to follow its audience. So while it is silly to expect them to be progressive or avant garde, it is equally silly for ads to pose reactionary challenges to their buyers.
Everyone buys fans, whether they use quotas or not, whether they approve of them or resent them. The Havells ad failed its own fundamental duty to understand the diversity of its consumers.It reflects the biases of the presumably middle-class upper caste professionals who made it, and the company whose product it hopes to sell. It failed to be where the people are, and that's a big boo-boo.
After an outcry led by Dalit-Bahujan voices and allies, Havells pulled the ad, with a weak “we don't want to hurt anyone's sentiments“. But this ad was a clear provocation, given the gale blowing across the country right now. To make little of caste discrimination on campus and student politics, even as Hyderabad Central University is boiling over, is as deliberate a statement as it gets.
The ad may have been withdrawn, but the argument is still raging. Now, there are valid quibbles about the bluntness of quotas, but their advantage is that they are simple and easy to enforce. They are emphatically not special favours. If you looked at the population, and the legitimate share that social groups should have in education, you'd see how hard it is for Dalits and OBCs to cross each educational threshold. Anyone in the “general“ category can plainly see that they are, in fact, the minority with a megaphone.
Quotas are clearly not enough for social mobility , though; it takes a lot more to dismantle caste inequality and prejudice. In fact, appearing to make education accessible without actually doing it sustains the status quo; it disguises social hierarchies as academic hierarchies.
Some, defending the Havells ad, asked why young people shouldn't have the confidence to give up crutches and concessions. In other words, their own inherited privileges are okay, but reservations must be vacated by better-off Dalits and OBCs to make place for others.
They wouldn't dream of depriving their children of special tuition or other advantages, but any shaky foothold in the interest of social justice is considered shameful.
This is, of course, an all-too familiar debate, and no minds are being changed by any commercials.
Advertising, in its essence, is meant to follow its audience. So while it is silly to expect them to be progressive or avant garde, it is equally silly for ads to pose reactionary challenges to their buyers.
Everyone buys fans, whether they use quotas or not, whether they approve of them or resent them. The Havells ad failed its own fundamental duty to understand the diversity of its consumers.It reflects the biases of the presumably middle-class upper caste professionals who made it, and the company whose product it hopes to sell. It failed to be where the people are, and that's a big boo-boo.
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