Watch the ad that had to be withdrawn for its insensitivity to Dalits and mistake on reservation
A fan-maker's new ad gets tangled in its own misplaced message.
In the end, Havells electric fans stopped going round and round a bad idea fairly quickly.
The furious reaction to its three-part ad, in one of which it was clearly implied that those who get reservations are lacking in self-respect, forced a withdrawal of the commercial. The other two narratives were problematic too, but the one about reservation was both ill-informed and badly timed.
This part of the ad begins with a father-daughter duo collecting college application forms. The father wants to pick up a form from the pile marked “quota”, but the daughter refuses, going for the “general” category.
The background song, roughly translated, goes, “I am a fan, even if a small fan. I have grown on my own, I stand on my own strengths. I don’t need a ladder, I am the new generation. I am a self-respecting fan, I don’t blow winds that betray the country.”
In the current environment in the country, following Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula’s suicide, the ad was quickly interpreted as a thoughtless statement against backward classes. Worse, it misread the very concept of reservation, which is not about competition, but about ensuring participation in decision-making for those sections of society that have never been involved on this process.
The narrative here suggests that those who have had the same privileges as the so-called general category of the population should not choose to benefit from reservation. Indeed, the refrain goes, taking this benefit amounts to betraying the country. No wonder the ignorance and bias in the commercial were called out at once.
Following the outrage, the company took the ad down and issued an apology, where too it didn't seem to have understood the problem.
The second part of the ad depicts a woman taking her children out, waving the chauffeur away and choosing to drive herself, to the surprise of the man.
The third part takes on the phenomenon of student protests, with posters that say “spirit of the free”, but the students appear to be on a rampage, threatening people around them.
Let's get rid of reservations, let women drive, and stop with student politics already. Or, the winds of change, as Havells sees it in this commercial.
