Hear no evil, is the new soundbite. The nation's acoustic senses, now slowly being trained to respond to the dulcet notes of Vande Mataram, should on no account continue to be sullied by Sexy Sandra's breathing exercises or Wanton Wendy's I-am-so-lonely-please-speak-to-me whispers. The message now is: no telephone sex please, we are Indian.

It is, of course, a cause worth striving for, of that there is little doubt. No longer will the bored office clerk wait for his boss' back to be turned to renew acquaintance with a certain someone in Hong Kong, running up huge office bills in the process; and no longer will pimply-faced teeny-boppers pretend they are researching geography projects on Seychelles by dialling X-rated phone numbers to the islands. We know how to take care of sick minds, says Swaraj, with a distinct touch of iron in her voice. The lady means business, so voice junkies had better watch out.

Unfortunately for the cause though, cracking down on porn is a tough act to follow. Like suspended particulate matter or the measles virus, it laces the very air. Okay, VSNL may be able to block out the tele-bimbos for the moment, but will the minister now requisition a metronome to measure Ravena Tandon's cinematic gyrations? And what about that individual who goes by the name of William Jefferson Clinton and that little blue cocktail dress of Monica Lewinsky's adorned with presidential genetic material which keeps popping up in the nine o'clock news? Can sarkari babudom take such news items to the cleaners before the duly detoxified great Indian public gets to ingest them? Or better still, can the MEA be persuaded to sternly rap Clinton on his knuckles and tell him to behave himself? And what about the Internet -- that cornucopia of pornography? Will Swaraj's broom be able to sweep it clean of ``obnoxious and sexually-explicit material and unacceptable language''? The lady says that it can and itwill. Good luck to her. But it does seem that the minister underestimates the entrepreneurial talent of the merchants of porn.