Sunny leone, one of the world's biggest porn-star**, is trending on twitter. It's her birthday, you see!
@Sunnyleone isn't @SuperstarRajini, the Tamil superstar Rajinikanth's handle on the micro-blogging site, launched last week. Nor has she achieved 3.67 lakh follows that Thalaivar did and with just three tweets at that.
But Ms leone's brand got enviable amplification only thanks to poor governance -6.57 lakh followsand growing and the status of one of the most searched humans this side of the Suez.
So, here's the point. Just two-and-a-half-years back, 0n November 22, 2011, this column addressed self-regulation bodies in India's Rs 80,000-crore media space. I argued that via Colors, a home-entertainment TV channel, the pornstar and her entire array of sex products are being cross-promoted on the internet, mobile applications and the social media space.
Inamed Press Council chief MarkandeyKatju and News Broadcasting Standards Authority chairman JS Verma (since deceased). The recourse, I argued, lay with Justice AP Shah, a former chief of Delhi High Court, who the entertainment channels have to guard the broadcasting contents complaints council (BCCC). Here, he and a panel of 12 other notables shoulder societal responsibility towards non-news TV (IBF) channels.
Before I realized, noted RTI activist Devashish Bhattacharya had impleading himself. Dev's complaint of November 24 was finally heard, but a month after its filing. Meanwhile, Ms leone's pornographic site out-Googled all other sites in India, her name searched several times more than Katrina Kaif andAishwarya Rai Bachchan! India Today and Mint celebrated these search figures. But no one questioned the cross-promotion!
Justice Shah acceded to Dev's personal submissions and a horrid set of colour prints establishing the mess. He gave Colors three days to stop the cross promotion. But there were no penalties for damages already done. Shah's order meant very little -today's Twitter trend bears me out.
Waking up after one month, BCCC catapulted the feisty lady's site www.sunnyleone.com on everyone's lips. That includes children, right! lest we forget, Optenet claims that 37 per cent of pages on the internet contain porn material - Extreme Tech claims total 30 per cent of traffic is sleaze. Read these with Sintef figures where 90 per cent of all data on the planet was created in the last two years.
I am all for India embracing Ms leone, aka Karen Malhotra for the first 22 years of her life. Her eclectic mix of skin and anglicised Punjabi has every right to find a market as an actor! But since end-2011, it is her ensemble of porn that is bang inside our bedrooms.
The judge has been justifying his weak judgment, ie, 'on TV, which is what the BCCC regulates, Ms leone was in ghaghra-choli and was really demure too.' He decipher double entendre in Ms leone's, "main yahan FUN karnachahtihoon," in husky Canadian accent et al.
Did Justice Shah expect Ms leone to shed her clothes on TVIJ Did he care how big the world's pornography industry is and serious bucks riding on Ms leone since Penthouse's Bob Guccione stripped her of a 'Malhotra' association, making her Pet of the Y2003!
Credit streaming HD content downloaded from the members area of www.sunnyleone.com (not to mention other such 'addas'), stuff on her athleticism Indians can smuggle from her online DVD store, and mobile downloads, helpfully promoted via @Sunnyleone for 84thousand follows in November 2011 to 6.57 lakh now.
In the complainant's presence, Justice Shah's aides said,Colors may have "knowingly or unknowingly" promoted all of the above. IBF employs them only to manage honourable vindication for the deviant.
I wonder what the body can actually do after lakhs (including children) had retweeted and shared that mobile apps can be bought from sunny@nitizart.com. What's the penalty for MTV India that tirelessly promoted this among3.88 lakh twitter followers at that time - a number Sunny leone's verified handle has outpaced eversinceIJ
Mr Bhattacharya had cited in his complaint: "Normally women kept tissues handy while watching TV soaps; thanks to Sunnyleone, men will keep their tissues handy during BigBoss5." There was prescience in his sarcasm.
(The columnist works at the intersect of media, regulation and strategy on RIl. The views are personal. Follow on @therohitbansal)
** TopTenReviews (in 2006) claimed that the global porn industry was worth $97 billion!