Diwali, the festival of lights, is a special occasion for millions of Hindus who celebrate it with a huge pomp and show. Apart from the festivity, the festival also attracts a form of virtue signalling where various various eminent personalities and brands lament about the alleged pollution hazards the festival causes, while not appearing to do anything worthwhile to curb pollution for the rest of the year.
We had already carried a report that shows how firecrackers burst during Diwali are not the main pollution hazard, especially in the Delhi-NCR. Apart from that, use of firecrackers has progressively been going down as people have shunned them voluntarily, yet, motley of activists keep on shaming people for bursting crackers as if they are the central reason for pollution.
Such condescending and preachy attitude, especially in wake of Supreme Court banning sale of firecrackers in Delhi-NCR, led many people to feel angered and frustrated. And they felt the same, when some top brands on Twitter decided to do the same:
As clearly seen in the picture, the face mask with “Happy Diwali” written on it, insinuated worsening air quality during the festival. This preachy tweet wasn’t taken too kindly by twitter users who expressed their displeasure:
https://twitter.com/_dharam_vir/status/920277138430877696?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/eaniman/status/920205285435650048?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/amritabhinder/status/920256161072291840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/iAnkurSingh/status/920479875491815425?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
After Panasonic it was noticed that, Samsung and Tata Power (arguably one of the major ‘pollutants’) had put up such tweets on earlier Diwali. But this Diwali, the sense of being wronged and being preached unnecessarily was strong, so these brands also came under attack:
https://twitter.com/prasannavishy/status/920512285579366401?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/bija_hem/status/920533698843353090?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/realitycheckind/status/920510184971268098?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/YearOfRat/status/920552337994682368?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/nayanchandra/status/920544443018698752?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/attomeybharti/status/920524806092656640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Such a sustained pressure by the netizens probably made the companies realise that it was creating a negative brand perception and the all three deleted their preachy tweets. Tata Power possibly even got into damage control mode and later put out this tweet, which was not blatantly anti-cracker and preachy:
https://twitter.com/TataPower/status/920608530125570050?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw