Let us quickly recall the advertisement plot. A grandmother with her granddaughter visits a family in the village. This jaunt was managed on a holiday. In this family, a father-daughter duo is shown. Here the grandmother learns that this girl doesn’t go to school. At this point, her father rejoins with ‘school jaa kar kya karegi’ expression. The aware grandmother refutes his age-old conception and says that literate girls can do many things on their own. She concludes in an assertive tone saying, ‘Padhai hi ladkiyon ka asli gehna hai (Education is a girl’s ornament)’. Finally, the fifth character in the form of a parrot flies in mouthing dadiji’s words, ‘gehna hai’. With this, the advertisement ends. It is a cool one and even I liked it until a literal translated advertisement was shown.

Yes, the same advertisement has English voice-over as well. I could not digest this. The programme aims to target the unlettered parents of girls who don’t send them to schools. To motivate this target audience, the earlier advertisement with Hindi voice-over was perfect to create the right ripples but I couldn’t understand that who is being targeted with the English voice-over one.

I hope I am not the only one to notice this gaffe or have I misunderstood something. Do enlighten me if I am wrong or are you with me?