Following
the suggestions of a Parliamentary Standing Committee, the Central Government is
preparing to bring into existence a new law that would make celebrities and
other media personalities accountable for endorsing products or services in
ways that might be considered misleading or deceptive from the point of view of
the consumer.
A fine of upto
₹10 lakh along with a prison sentence of two years may be levied upon a first
time offender, while repeat offenders may be handed a fine of upto ₹50 lakh
along with a prison sentence of five years or above.
While I can
understand why many people would find the existence of such a legal provision
reassuring, I cannot personally support the implementation of such a law,
should it ultimately come into existence.
The reasons
for my objection to such a law are varied and numerous, but I will try to
explain all of them in the following paragraphs.
To punish a
celebrity for the misleading advertisements conceptualized and created by
companies and other corporate entities is the same as punishing the agents of a
fraudulent financial firm for the activities of their employers. I am sure
there will be many who would be unable to relate to this argument. After all,
when we think of smalltime financial agents we imagine a harried-looking sales
person knocking on our door at inconvenient hours, probably someone hailing
from a relatively underprivileged background with limited opportunities for
employment. The word ‘celebrity’, however, immediately brings to our mind
images of couture clothing and branded jewellery, perfectly made up faces and
styled hair. How can the two of them possibly be compared to one another?
But when we
really come to think about it, we realize that there really is not that much of
a difference between the two when it comes to knowledge and understanding of the
technical details of the product they are selling. A celebrity is as incapable
of understanding the nuances of the chemical formula used in the fairness cream
she is endorsing as a financially illiterate agent is of comprehending the
intricate monetary details of his company. Should the company’s monetary policy
be faulty, is the agent not innocent of that deception? If so, then how can the
celebrity endorsing the fairness cream be expected to know if the formula for
the product contained irregularities?
The greatest
charge that can be brought against them is one of carelessness; but surely one
should not be locked up in a cell for years for that crime alone.
This brings
me to my second point. It is human nature to be interested in the rise and fall
of celebrities. The rapidly proliferating gossip sites and tabloids stand
witness to the fact that we are endlessly fascinated by the lives of celebrities;
by their successes, but even more so by their failures. It is in our nature to
deify those we admire, only to then watch their pedestal break.
It is easy
to dissociate ourselves from the troubles of those with whom we cannot relate.
They are celebrities, after all. They have it all! Money, fame, popularity,
beauty – more than we could ever dream of having. What problems could they ever
face?
Tempting as
it is to assume that self-righteous position, we must remember that deifying a
man does not really grant him divine powers. Celebrities can be as easily deceived
as a common man. They are as prone to making mistakes. And being famous does
not make their mistakes any more or less culpable than ours. Just as a common
man may be deceived by a celebrity’s endorsement of a sub-par product, so too
can a celebrity be deceived by the agents of a company into believing that the product is of better quality than it actually is.
Expecting a
celebrity to actually use every single product that he or she endorses is an
unreasonable demand. It is the same as expecting an insurance agent to have
personally subscribed to every single insurance policy that he is selling. Even
if the celebrity actually wanted to do so, there would not be enough time to analyze
the long-term effects of using the product before the advertisement was made.
Also, the company could provide the concerned celebrity with a better specimen
of the product than the one being sold in the mass market. Now of course, the
celebrity could probably go in disguise to a local market and anonymously buy
the product in order to then use it and authenticate the claims of the company,
but I think we can all understand the impracticality of such a practice,
especially when carried out on an industry-wide scale.
Consumers
are not children, and should not be treated as such. When Akshay Kumar jumps
off a cliff to catch a bottle of Thums Up, I do think that all well-balanced
adults know to take his actions with a grain of salt. Why then should we not
receive Parineeti Chopra’s weight-loss claims with similar skepticism? In the
age of the internet, it is impossible to completely shield our citizens from
dubious information about a variety of things. Why not then truly train them to
distinguish between reality and exaggeration, instead of trying to implement
ambiguous and impractical laws against entertainers who may have no idea about
the misinformation being spread in their names?
It is time
for us, as a nation, to grow up and accept responsibility for our own actions;
to banish the gullibility that advertisers use to lure us with the faces of
film stars superimposed upon useless products. If somebody must be punished, it
is the companies that knowingly disseminate false information for personal profit.
Imprisoning innocents – no matter how enviable their position – for our own
lack of sound judgment is not justice, it is just another form of the same
misdirection and obfuscation of which we are accusing the celebrities.
