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When the pujas come Rowling in
The organisers should have realised that Brand India is on a roll now and with all eyes on India, they would need a magic wand to escape the Dementors of Ms Rowling.
Globalisation and market integration have its pitfalls, the Left kept warning us repeatedly. And we ignored it. And now look who’s paying for not listening: Calcuttans, and that too just days before Durga Puja. Puja organisers in the FD block of Salt Lake have been issued a notice by the Delhi High Court that points to a suit that has been filed against them by ‘JK Rowling and others’ for violating the Indian Copyright Act. And here’s why: the organisers have constructed a pandal that resembles the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry — you know, Harry Potter’s school of magic. To make it more realistic, a mock steam engine like the Hogwarts Express was being built next to it. Greeting one at the cave-like entry, the plan was to have covers of Ms Rowling’s seven books and a range of magical creatures that Hogwarts’s gamekeeper Hagrid would have heartily approved of.
The organisers, who knew they had a sure-shot crowd-puller — and a money-spinner from the adjoining stalls — in hand, hiked the rates for setting up stalls and banners. Now, alas, they have been handed a Rs 20 lakh ‘compensation’ bill. The organisers should have realised that Brand India is on a roll now and with all eyes on India, they would need a magic wand to escape the Dementors of Ms Rowling. With puja webcasts and podcasts becoming as popular as pandal-hopping, these agents would have sniffed out the money-making opportunity sooner or later.
Having said that, we think it’s mighty unfair that well-meaning bhadraloks have landed up in such trouble just days before the pujas. But there is something that amazes us much more: doesn’t the Rowling camp know that there is something called co-branding in the world of business?
