By Your Editor
The image you see above is the creative of the Amul billboard put up last November (2016, that is). That the godawful weather in the capital and a good part of north and bits of the west and east have become such a routine that the butter-maker and and its agency didn’t think it worthy to capture the sentiment yet again.
The worst is possibly over, some say. We read a news report saying that pollution levels will go down yet again.
We write this for several reasons. For one, a majority of our readers come from the National Capital Region. Mumbai is high, but Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida are a notch higher. And while we aren’t headquartered in Delhi or have a full-fledged office in the region, we care about our readers. In fact our primary allegiance is to our readers. In our content, and in every possible way.
So we understand what many of you are going through. And feel awful that we can do nothing about it.
However, it’s important that we in the media do something about it. And ensure that November 2018 doesn’t see an encore.
We shouldn’t just leave it to our newspapers and news channels, even advertising folk need to chip.
How about employing creative and innovative energies to improve life in smog-hit parts of the country. Get clients to fun such projects. Build pressure on law-makers to start acting now.
Get media owners to give out available inventory.
Can there be tickers across channels while the popular shows are on? Can some of our big reality show hosts make a plea for cleaner air?
It’s time that the media gets together to do something. For, we all depend on people to consume our content and messaging. And if they aren’t able to do that because of health- and environment-related issues, the losses could be bigger than those that happened post demonetisation and GST.
Let’s do something for our own future.