In the time of Google Earth when you can locate your living room on the web, in the time of a confident India emerging as a global power, the government still feels that a line-drawing could undermine its sovereignty.

So even as the Information and Broadcasting Ministry plans to ease regulations on advertising in foreign print media, an archaic practice is delaying their distribution.

Every edition which carries a map of India — particularly one depicting the Indo-Pak border — is delayed by at least two days. The reason: a special cell of the Customs department stamps each map in every single copy imported with the message: “The external boundaries of India as depicted are neither accurate nor authentic”. The ugly sarkari blue stamp impression is often illegible.

“While our magazine is to hit the stands on Mondays, we are only able to make it available on Wednesdays due to this whole map-stamping exercise. This is a problem in the competitive media world. You have a story which must be out on Monday but fails to do so. Then the story becomes stale or has already been published. All the clockwork precision falls apart,” says the bureau chief of a foreign news magazine on the condition that he not be named. “It is ridiculous. The stamping is done manually so the map can hardly be seen properly in any case and, worse, even the stamp impression is unreadable at times. Now that we are picking up circulation, it’s a pity such things can delay the magazine’s distribution so badly.”

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