We all may have watched the commercials of UTI Mutual Fund currently on air.UTI is a public sector company and the stock market is in doldrums.However these commercials show common indian people wearing expensive foreign watches or going on multiple foreign trips.Indeed a lot of investors of UTI(My father is a customer) stay invested in the company because it helps us fulfill certain fiancial needs on an annual basis.The kind of returns UTI offers is not good enough to finance a foreign trip.And indeed most UTI investors are NOT thinking of a foreign trip when they park their hard-earned money with UTI.It is generally children's education or medical treatment or at the most a daughter's wedding that we have in mind.So why show this kind of stuff?There are other advertisements airing presently that promote an alternate lifestyle.Take the Birla Sun Life Insurance ad.A person who works as a personal assistant in a company is seen receiving medical treatment in a luxurious hospital.And he is talking about sending his son to the UK for doing his MBA.Can an insurance policy give returns good enough to make this possible.For people like us who have lost a lot of money by investing in unit-linked insurance schemes(ULIPs) this kind of advertisements are all the more painful.Then there are the ads for automobiles,high-end automobiles.These guys present the cars costing 7-8 lakhs as desirable and even affordable.We live in a country where most people are poor.And we are being tempted to think big,crave and desire big through advertisements such as this.The rich have always done these things-gone on foreign holidays,sent their children abroad for higher studies and bought high-end cars.But can even the so-called middle class afford these things?Should we not concentrate on building the economy,creating genuine jobs and augmenting national income?Why create a demand for esoteric,luxurious lifestyle which the majority of us cannot afford anyway.
