The law doesn't blame Madhuri for Maggi... even if you want to!

It was reported on Tuesday that an independent advocate has filed a case against actors Amitabh Bachhan, Madhuri Dixit and Preity Zinta who endorsed the household product we all grew up with — Maggi. 

The ‘two-minute’ noodles have been in the eye of the storm since it was revealed that several batches of their products across India contained dangerous levels of lead, which can be fatal. And now, so are the celebrities whose shining faces on silver screens told the rest of us to “Love Maggi.”

It cannot be questioned that celebrities are people who exert a lot of influence over the general public, and should exercise this power in a responsible, not reckless manner. 

According to the Food Standards and Safety Authority of India (FSSAI) Act, anyone whomsoever is a party to a misleading advertisement or its publication can be fined up to Rs 10 lakh. 

In February, last year, the Central Consumer Protection Council (CCPC), the apex body for consumer protection in India, ruled that actors could be held liable for making “false claims” in advertisements and endorsing a product that they “know to be misleading.”

So, on the face of it, there seems a possibility that Bacchhan senior and the rest of Bollywood’s finest may be in a hot soup. But the CCPC was clear about one thing: these people can only be held accountable for endorsements or statements they made “recklessly” or if they had knowledge that the product was unsafe, or the advertisement claim false or misleading.

It all boils down to what lawyers call mens rea; and what we call intention. Did Amitabh know there was a high-lead percentage in Maggi noodles? Did Zinta? What about Madhuri? Did your local grocer know? Did the canteen-cook who gives you a plate during teatime every day? 

There is no belittling the role of celebrity endorsements in India —they account of half our country’s ads. Also, you don’t even need to be Indian to know the the influence a Bacchan exert on the country’s less educated population — which is, sadly, still in the majority. One can safely say, products can be moved on the basis of Madhuri’s smile alone. 

Yet, the law is clear — to be liable, they must have been reckless or had knowledge of their false claims. As of yet, there is no proof of either criteria applying to any of the stars.

If this were a case of deceptive advertising such as the infamous 2011 Reebook Easy Tone shoes controversy — where the company sold shoes based on claims that they would provide extra tone and strength to leg and buttock muscles — one may be tempted to hold the celebrities involved responsible. This is an easy fact-checkable claim; all the celebrity has to do is use the product for a few months. Voila! truth will reveal itself, the star could be said to have intention to deceive. 

Chillax,  Bipasha isn't going to be found liable either. She endorsed the product in 2009, and the company only started settling claims by 2011. (But, you -- who fell for that misassformation -- may get your money back.)

This is not even similar to the Home Trade scam of 2002 in which Sachin Tendulkar, Hrithik Roshan and Shah Rukh Khan endorsed a company that created no products and scammed 1000s of crores of investor money. 

This is an issue with a food product, which we’ve all been using years before any of the three stars complained against began endorsing it. It is an issue that was only recently discovered by the Food Safety & Drug Administration in Uttar Pradesh.

There’s no doubt that having lead levels which are seven-times the permissible level in food which is marketed and sold to children is a serious matter. And if Maggi, or the endorsers had knowledge of this danger, they’re liable criminally, ethically, and morally. 

But as the law goes, that knowledge is key; and ignorance — in this case — can be bliss of the Bollywood trio. 

(These views above are my personal opinions, and do not represent - in any manner - the opinion of my employer, or media organisations association with me.)

Did you say Hoe? Well, I say - So?

Every now and then — actually more often than I care for — I hear one woman say to another ‘you’re such a prostitute.’ We’ve also seen it used in a million celebrity fights— most recent (to my recollection) the Sinead/Miley open letter wars where Sinead O’Connor sincerely urges Miley Cyrus to ‘not act like a prostitute.’

During these moments, I’m less shocked by whatever these women are actually doing to incite this manner of insult — Miley’s twerks are no Helen of Troy war starters now are they? — and more curious as to what’s so wrong with the profession of prostitution that merits such widespread social disdain.

I don’t know very many sex-workers, but that’s not to say I know none. Admittedly the women I know do not fall into the mean average of what one finds or expects to find when ‘sex worker’ comes to mind. Frankly, however, I don’t think anyone falls into such strictly labeled boxes anyway.

My friends are young women who’ve made an active choice to pursue this profession. Some are simply sexually ambivalent and use the money the same way I used my bar tending wages or my call center pay — carelessly and to buy shoes. Others got into it with full knowledge of the monetary benefits and use what they earn to fund side businesses or pay off their college loans and mortgages.

I’m proud to call these women my friends. They’re smart, tough, imbued with innate common sense; they’re sensitive and kind. It’s a joy to watch one of my friends talk to a stranger at a bar — she could make a death-row inmate feel valued and at ease five minutes before execution. I’ve seen her take genuine interest in the war stories of an old guy who every other girl there made rude faces at and wrote off as creepy. The veteran was better for the kindness she showed him, and she — one of the best writers I know— better for her accepting attitude because now she has a story or two in her arsenal. More importantly, for her, even the grubby old man drinking himself to death in a mid-western bar deserved respect.

But my objection against the stigmatization of prostitutes is greater than just the fact that they do not deserve to be stigmatized in the first place. It’s that the choice held against them is not the only choice they make — this is just their profession. They’re no more defined by what they do than my lawyer friends are defined by what they do in a courtroom all the livelong day. This constant slut-shaming rhetoric that seems to go hand-in-hand with discussions about the profession ignore a very basic fact — These women are more than how they chose to express or use their sexuality. They are more than just their jobs. They’re actors, musicians, writers, mothers, friends, and advisers. And a lot, lot more — just like everyone else in this world.

I’m aware that my friends are simply one end of the spectrum. For every one like them, there may be 8 women who are being forced into prostitution, drug addiction and exploited by their pimps. The stories of these women are gut wrenching. They face constant violence against their persons, and have no one to turn to for justice.

It’s at this point that I ask: Is it the prostitute who’s to blame for this? Is it the john?

Here, I put forth it is neither. The fault lies not with the customer or the profession. The fault lies with the law. If anything, this stigmatization— the criminalization of prostitution, society’s two-faced hatred for sex-workers, and this constant slut-shaming rhetoric plays an insidious role in propagating the exploitation of women. It creates a lose-lose situation for any woman or girl who is brought into the profession against her will. On one hand there’s her pimp, on the other the long arm of the law.

If anti-prostitution laws and this anti-prostitution attitude were to be removed from our legal and social discourse, I strongly believe women in the field would be able to exercise a larger degree of control over their bodies — and whatever they choose to do with this freedom, who is anyone to judge them?

Morality has proved time and again to be subjective. Who is to say that having an avenue where one can safely express one’s sexuality won’t benefit our society?

Six news stories that deserve more attention than the 'royal baby'

All week, ‘royal baby’ nonsense has taken over my Facebook and twitter feeds, and even the newspapers I like to read. All week, people have been posting stories or status updates about what this baby’s name should be, or what presents it will get. I even read an article this morning about the fact that it’s being called a baby and not a fetus. Another story purported to tell me 7 things I didn't know about the royal baby - what could there be to know, it's just been born for crying out loud!

Here’s my frank opinion about the royal baby: I don’t see why it’s so royal. Britain is a bloody democracy; to a large number of the people so enthralled, the royal family actually serves as nothing more than a reminder of a long gone and not at all proud era of colonialism. I neither care that it’s born, nor do I think that its birth is a news worthy story.

However, since all we seem to read now are lists and snippets about 'the royal baby', here’s a Buzzfeed inspired list of some shit that is important, that happened, and you may have missed over the past week’s baby fervor:

1.     Bradley Manning’s trial: Bradley Manning is a 25-year-old American soldier (read: kid) who’s been charged under the US Espionage Act, and has been in jail for 3 years now. His trial began 8 weeks ago. He admittedly leaked documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan war to Wikileaks. He says he did so to spark a public debate. The prosecution in this case is claiming that Osama Bin Laden could have read Manning’s leaks and by this twisted logic, Manning aided the enemy. The judge has refused to set aside this charge of aiding the enemy.

Manning isn’t even claiming to be innocent — for one, he is not. However, he is quite rightly asserting that the interpretation of the law in his case is absurd, and that the punishment that’s about to be doled out to him is disproportionate. If he’s charged with aiding the enemy, Bradley Manning will get a life sentence.

Why you should care: Such a wide interpretation of the Espionage Act effectively means no one will ever talk to a journalist again. Anytime a whistleblower comes to a reporter, and the reporter prints his story, the whistleblower is essentially aiding the enemy.

2.     CBI autonomy: The CBI has to ask for sanction from the government to investigate senior bureaucrats. The same senior bureaucrats that make up the government, or are members of the party that is the ruling government at the moment. Does that seem right to you? So far, the government’s lawyers have been asserting that giving the CBI autonomy will open the doors for a police state and/or lead to these officials being harassed — the same officials that are responsible for the Coalgate scam.

Why you should care: Because you want senior officials in your government to know they’re open to investigation by a third party that does not answer to them. Because you want a government that is less corrupt, and corruption can only be tackled by public accountability.

3.   RTI is being changed to exclude political parties from its ambit: A major share of funding for political parties comes from voluntary donations — and it is not you and I, or any individual citizen making these voluntary donations. It is naïve to deny that the sources of these funds assert some influence over the views held by political parties and their MPs. As such, the funding of political parties is information that pertains directly to your democratic rights. All the functioning democracies in the world have a system in place to keep tabs on political financing, but India does not. We might have been able to file an RTI application to ask political parties (clearly public bodies) to disclose their election financials, but a recent Bill calls to amend the RTI to take political parties out of the Act’s ambit.

Why you should care: Transparency in government starts with transparency in political finance.

4.     The Rupee is expected to fall to 62 against the dollar in the next two weeks: Our merchandise exports are decreasing while our imports are increasing. To curb the fall, the government is opening up foreign direct investment into everything from telecom to defense. DEFENSE!!! The other sectors that the government is opening up includes retail, courier services, credit information companies. But please let me repeat this for you, because it is important — DEFENSE! That it’s on a case-by-case basis means nothing; when was the last time a tender went through the Indian government without involving bribes?

Why you should care: If you don’t care that our defense system is now open to foreign investment, then care because your holiday abroad just got a lot more expensive.

5.     Chinese human rights activist Xu Zhiyong, a prominent lawyer and professor known for his support for greater government transparency, was detained (again) on July 17th. He was held on suspicion of “gathering people to disturb order in a public place.” Hundreds of people have come together in Beijing to ask for his release.

Why you should care: This is a quote (you can find it on Wikipedia) from Professor Zhiyong that explains better than I ever could why you should care about this man: “I wish our country could be a free and happy one. Every citizen need not go against their conscience and can find their own place by their virtue and talents; a simple and happy society, where the goodness of humanity is expanded to the maximum, and the evilness of humanity is constrained to the minimum; honesty, trust, kindness, and helping each other are everyday occurrences in life; there is not so much anger and anxiety, a pure smile on everyone’s face.”

6.     Suspension of Five MLAs revoked yesterday: Five Maharashtran MLAs were suspended from the legislative assembly after their arrest in March for beating up a police officer. Why'd they beat him up? He stopped and fined one of them for over-speeding on the Sea-Link. These MLAs had their suspensions revoked yesterday. 

      Why you should care: The reason given for reinstating these violent thugs into office: since the police office who was beaten up was back to work now, the suspensions should also be revoked.  

The courts must be crazy

Since leaving the legal profession, I’ve found myself defending Indian judgments more than ever before. Sometimes it is much needed; legal orders are easily misinterpreted and misquoted by the media, leading an average person to think all judges are crazy. Other times, the average person is spot on- the judgment put forth is as close to crazy as can be. Today, I find myself wishing I could call the latest spate of supposedly women-friendly judgments passed by the Delhi High Court, and most recently the Madras High Court, crazy. I really, really wish I could. Crazy would be better than insidious.

In case you haven’t read, last week the Delhi High Court ruled (albeit in a matter of anticipatory bail) that promising a woman marriage to obtain sex is tantamount to rape- an archaic sentiment that was reasonably overturned by the Supreme Court this year. Today, the Hindu carries news of a Madras High Court order stating that pre-marital sex is all one needs to establish the relationship of marriage. Even if these observations are obiter dicta, some lawyer, some lower court is going to bring this up again, for sure. For a brief moment, let's put aside the legal implications of these judgments - those are mind-numbing, to say the least.

On the face of it one might think that these judgments have been passed to protect a woman but let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? In two fell swoops, the court has made its message quite clear: “Women need protection from licentious men, and women only have sex in order to get married to the man.” To follow the thought to its logical conclusion, women are so desperate to get married that they are being easily duped by men into having sex with them on the basis of just a promise. Follow it a bit further; a sexually active woman who doesn’t want or expect marriage is a bad woman, a loose woman, a woman who is asking for it.

Both judgments are examples of a type of sexism: Benevolent sexism; particularly difficult to counter purely because, as the name suggests, it appears to be so affable.

The term was coined in 1996 by Peter Glick and Susan Fiske. In 2012, the University of Florida conducted an in-depth study into the theory, and found that both men and women are equally prone to benevolent sexism. The idea was summed up perfectly by Dr. Kathleen Connelly, PhD the lead author of this study, as the perception that "women are wonderful, but weak" It’s inbuilt into social norms that feminists have long fought against, without much help from (even) other women.

When faced with top level judges enforcing this idea by insisting that women need protection from men who make false promises; by insinuating that sex between two people is anything more than that because it automatically leads to the women assuming there’s a deeper, long-lasting commitment, what are we to think?

Connelly states that “several studies have shown that when women read benevolently sexist comments, for example, they tend to perform more poorly on cognitive tests, express feelings of incompetence and weakness, and even experience greater dissatisfaction with their physical appearance. Not to mention, it might even perpetuate current inequalities—disparities in pay, for instance—that women still experience.”

An excellent example of the hazard of this kind of sexism was given in the Scientific American blog. It’s such a good example that I’m quoting it verbatim below:

“For a very recent example of how benevolent sexism might play out in our everyday lives, take a look at this satirical piece, which jokingly re-writes Albert Einstein’s obituary.

To quote: He made sure he shopped for groceries every night on the way home from work, took the garbage out, and hand washed the antimacassars. But to his step daughters he was just Dad. ”He was always there for us,” said his step daughter and first cousin once removed Margo.

Albert Einstein, who died on Tuesday, had another life at work, where he sometimes slipped away to peck at projects like showing that atoms really exist. His discovery of something called the photoelectric effect won him a coveted Nobel Prize.

Looks weird, right? Kind of like something you would never actually see in print?

Yet the author of rocket scientist Yvonne Brill’s obituary didn’t hesitate before writing the following about her last week: She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job, and took eight years off from work to raise three children. “The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew said.

But Yvonne Brill, who died on Wednesday at 88 in Princeton, N.J., was also a brilliant rocket scientist, who in the early 1970s invented a propulsion system to help keep communications satellites from slipping out of their orbits.”

Sometimes, I wish I was making this shit up.

Recently upon joining a new work-place, I was told by someone to reign in my enthusiasm, to be a quieter, more subtle version of myself. “Don’t talk so much, don’t be so loud-mouthed with your opinions,” is what I was told. The example of a much quieter woman was given to me as the epitome of how a female should behave in an office. Never mind that the example/ epitome and I are totally different people. I’m not a quiet person, I am opinionated. I know a lot of men who are quite similar, and receive no criticism about it. In fact the person telling me so was pretty much, even if he didn’t realize it, foisting his opinion of what is correct behavior unto me- making him not very different from what he was telling me not to be. Had his mother told him to behave like an entirely different person, she’d be smothering; but when a man says these kinds of things to me, he’s being protective, he’s offering advice- never mind that I didn’t ask for any advice from him.

The sad truth behind this kind of benign sexism is that it’s not just the men that exercise it, but women as well. Think about the last time a friend of yours bemoaned that she earns more than her spouse, or Carrie Bradshaw cried over the lack of chivalry in this world without so much as a thought to how this so-called chivalry came about? What is the point of me lifting weights in a gym if I can’t even open the door for myself? Why am I working to make money, if the man is supposed to pay for my dinner?

To be honest, I’m plain ol’ riled up. I did wonder briefly if I would have been less irritated had these same courts stood up for the Verma Committee suggestions, and not buckled under pressure like they did. It might have been easier to stomach some of this, if India wasn't one of the only countries where marital rape isn't a crime. If the court didn't have the authority to rule on intimate matters between people then, I can't believe they think they do now. I certainly don’t need Justice Easwar to protect my hurt feelings or pride from every guy out there who lies. To put a rest to this line of thinking, let me be honest, women lie too. Oh, yes we do; and we lie to get sex too. Take a breath Judge- People, in general, sometimes lie to get what they want; the world is not a fair place, pretending that it is will only help prolong a stereotype that’s both insulting and condescending.

The flip side to sadness

Ashtrays are filled with smashed-out cigarettes; floor is ubiquitous with junk food wrappings. Knocks on your door go unanswered, tear stained sheets remain unchanged- to find in yourself a spark of interest in something has become an impossible task. Depression turns its sufferer into an emotional black hole. You live surrounded by a virtual moat of very real, mind-numbing sorrow. It leaves little room for anyone else or anything else.

If the urge to hide under your bed, behind locked doors and away from anything that grates at your oyster-shell of sadness, is overcome, you may convince yourself to call a friend. Or if you’re very lucky, your friends may notice your bouts of agoraphobia and call you, literally, out on it.

When your friends ring, you will find yourself unable to focus on what they are saying. You may ring them, but at the slightest hint of them being distracted, you’ll rush back behind that moat. The tragedy here isn’t that you are unable to find comfort in the people that surround you; rather, it is that they lose you, who could have been of some comfort to them.

The friends that ring you may have their own worries: dismissive spouses, dealings with death, career conundrums, parenting anxiety. You, however, will hear none of this. Since even the word love reminds you of your last heartbreak, you will not hear the fear in your friend’s voice when she talks about her up-coming nuptials. Since you’ve long decided you’ve got none, you will not hear how afraid your friends are of the future. The voices of your demons will drown any chances of empathising with those around you, who are also going through a tough time.

Your goddaughter’s birth, your friends’ hard-earned successes: What should be moments of jollity, moments you should celebrate, transform into voodoo pins digging into your heart. You will find yourself unable to participate wholly in someone else’s happiness, because all you can see is a life moving on while yours sinks in a quicksand of sorrow. In the meantime, the people around you will go on, living their lives like the roller coaster that it is. You, however, will remain stuck; numb from the effort of not feeling anything, you’ll have pushed yourself into a corner further dimmed by bitterness.

The saddest part about being sad isn’t that you float through loneliness, or having gnawed lips from holding back tears, or wishing for someone to lean on. It’s the narcissism that sorrow encourages in you. It becomes hard to see beyond your life, your hopes and how they were dashed. The worst part about crying is that it clouds your vision, and so causes you to reject any and all moments that could have held those tears at bay.