For those who are not able to snicker at the gags conjured up by those half-witted, imbecile morons from the Great Indian Laughter Challenge show…here is something that is sure to crack them up. It’s an advertisement (issued in the November 1 issue of TOI) highlighting the “DEVELOPMENTS” made by the Democratic Front government in its two year of being in power in Maharashtra.


Some of the most “dazzling” claims made by this ad are:

1. “I feel safe and secure right here”

I feel safe alright. With terrorist attacks becoming a once-in-a-fortnight affair and our ‘conscientious’ and ‘high-spirited’ police personnel getting tangled in zillion scams, charges of rape, extortion and corruption, I surely feel secure. After all, it is undeniably safer than Kabul or Baghdad!


2. “The best jobs in the world in IT, Finance etc are right here”

And what about some of the major IT corporations like Intel and Google that we lost out to Bangalore, thanks to the absurdly high real estate prices in Mumbai and predominantly due to the Maharashtra Urban Land Ceiling Act. (The Maharashtra government continues to swear by the Act despite its counter-productivity and the Centre’s advice against it.)


3. “I have seen airports abroad and we have similar ones….right here”

The lady in this ad need to be catechized exactly which Airports has she seen abroad. If she means airports of Sudan or Nigeria, then I think it’s a legitimate claim. But by that, if she means world class airports like Heathrow or JFK, then I guess we need to take her to a little tour of our International Airport, which I presume is the only Airport having the world’s largest slum in its own backyard! (Or is it Front yard!)



And the last one which will undoubtedly have you rolling in laughter,

4. “The roads are becoming better and the air cleaner”

What can I say about this stupefying comment? The one who has externalized this line has evidently either not been to Mumbai or is a burnout alcoholic! There are estimated 1500 potholes on roads in Mumbai including suburbs, some of them gargantuan enough to make the craters on Moon look diminutive! The pollution levels don’t draw a rosy picture either. The phrase ‘Cleaner Air’ is Latin for us Mumbaikars where breathing is equivalent to smoking almost 8 cigarettes daily!

This is the situation prevailing in the Financial Capital of India, the city which contributes 40% of income tax collections, 60% of customs duty collections, 20% of central excise tax collections, 40% of foreign trade and Rupees 40 billion (approx US$ 9 billion) in corporate taxes. The situation gets worse as we move into deeper parts of Maharashtra, where the exigency of load shedding (8-10 hours a day) and naxalite problems are rampant.

So instead of thinking about making us laugh by publishing such humorous ads (that too at the cost of the exchequer), I request our government to bequeath the money spent on such ads to those hapless and impoverished farmers who are committing suicides by the day. As far as our laughing is concerned, we will somehow manage to snicker at the gags conjured up by those half-witted, imbecile morons from the Great Indian Laughter Challenge show!