A national media behemoth puts up a tight close-up of Deepika Padukone’s chest and labels it in a manner that would put the spirogyra diagram in your class IX biology record to shame. And you think, well, we have reached the nadir — media, society and collective attitude can’t get worse than this. Then it does. Up comes a cover story in a Tamil magazine — again, from a fairly big and respectable media house — with ‘candid shots’ of women wearing leggings, with the sage observation that wearing those may be tantamount to obscenity. The incident disturbs and offends you on several fronts. Why does a portion of the population pass judgment on the attire of another? How do people get away with photographing a bunch of women and publishing it without their consent? And how can it all be so brazen – do something so morally, ethically, legally wrong and get away with it just because the victims are too bourgeois to come out in the open and complain?

But a week after the article was published and the online community spewed fury on Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp groups, the sun is rising in the east, the birds are singing and the said magazine has come out with several more editions. It’s back to business as usual. It certainly is heartening to see online activism. But that’s because it’s the only activism we seem to whip up enthusiasm for in our hectic, jaded lives. Sadly, it’s insufficient. We seem to posses split personalities. We breathe fire on the internet and when we log off, the fire goes off as well. Shouldn’t we be suing publications that offend? What about boycotting brands that demean women or exploit children?

That would be too much like hard work. We may vent outrage online over Mark Zuckerberg's cunning ploy to ‘cheat’ India of free internet — but go right back to Facebook to chuckle over how our PM gave him a gentle shove for a better TV angle.

Senior Assistant Editor

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