It is not just the Indian Cricket Team that is getting everything wrong

The opening lines on the front page of Mumbai Mirror, 18^th August 2011.

If you have never bribed a traffic cop…

If you haven’t paid donation for your child’s admission…

If you have never bought a movie ticket in black…

If you have paid the entire sum for your apartment by cheque….

If you have not carried out illegal changes in your house or office….

If you have never bribed a government officer….

….tell us of you’ve never paid a bribe in your life. Mail us your story, five readers selected by us get to meet Anna Hazare.

The first six lines were very appealing, a la Rang de Basanti wave, but it was the last two lines that caught my attention. Get a chance to meet Anna Hazare. It was just like another Scratch karo inaam pao or Kharidiye Pepsi aur paiyyen Men in blue se milne ka mauka gimmick.

It was these lines from the city’s leading tabloid that forced me into getting back to blogging. After experiencing Goa and Lonavala in the same month, there could have been nothing more provoking than this set of six lines that forced me to log onto wordpress again and get rid of my heavenly hangover.

Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption drive sweeping the nation is one of the best times, if you are a newspaper, an advertiser or a news channel because you might never really run out of content nor fail to get visibility. And Mumbai Mirror showed just that, when it printed their dim campaign today. I don’t know what brainstorming these guys must have done before designing something like this. Their initiative has shown that the Indian cricket team is not the only set of people who are getting everything wrong, but there is a chunk like them located in the heart of Mumbai developing such dis-HEARTening content.

On one hand there is man (Anna Hazare), who is not willing to give up on his stance to remove corruption from the nation, a move which closely resembles Rahul Dravid, who showed the world that he was in the form of his life, but that never helped India from maintaining their consistency (just like Dravid’s performance)  in losing all the three tests to England and on the other hand, there is a newspaper who is giving an offer to meet the modern Gandhi amidst all the commotion.

Courtesy Mumbai Mirror, today I strongly felt that a chhota four square was a thousand times better than a copy of the tabloid. At least it killed you with pleasure at Rupees 2.50 rather than the inexplicable and rubbish Mumbai Mirror content that frustratingly killed you by paying an equivalent price.

Mumbai Mirror’s move was as amusing as an INDIA TV campaign which exposed everything that never existed. This reckless idea from a brand under the Times Group puts a serious question mark on the kind of content they develop. This obviously excludes the Superstar Sexpert whose tips can actually be regarded even more revolutionary than Anna Hazare’s anti – corruption campaign, because it not only told those unaware cocks that pregnancy was not caused by kissing and caressing but also cleared the air that having a penis tilted towards the left had nothing to do with the gender of a child.

Just like the Mumbai Mirror, there are many more, cashing in on the Anna-effect to generate more TRP’s or get more readers. You term it insensitive, but it is the truth. The frustrated Arnab Goswami on Times Now, who thinks he is the Anna Hazare of Indian Television, can be seen firing on all cylinders in his studio with the same set of people, who now seem to be employees of the channel hired especially for The Newshour Debate, rather than being guests on the show. There is no method to the madness that is running through the media industry ever since Anna’s campaign kick started.

The first page of Mumbai Mirror that I saw today won’t be the last day that I bought this tabloid, but surely the brand’s credibility in my mind has gone a level below the baffling Speakasia, because the mirror today reflected stupidity instead of reflecting a balance of creativity and sensibility.