Anyone with a passing familiarity of Doordarshan and its nation-welding project will remember the national integration tableaux where the Indian state composed its own image through these public-service advertisements — whether it was about population control or “unity in diversity” or schooling. There are ideological assumptions embedded into these texts — they make bids on how viewers will react to the world around them. (The audience, in turn, may take what fits or discard these “messages” — their response is by no means uncomplicated identification.) But either way, when one is battered with images of Muslim backwardness or religious extremism, it is important to counter them with images of ordinary citizens getting on with their lives. Recall the stirring and effective ads right after 9/11 in the US — a montage of citizens, of different ages, races and religions looking straight into the camera to say, “I am an American.”

Besides by now, the visual vocabulary of the early public-service broadcasting days has seeped into our cultural cortex, and even now, anything from steel to scooters, cement to cellphones continue to refer to the same staples — the child planting a sapling, the laughing families on tractors, the girl hiding behind her veil. And after a certain point, they simply cease to communicate, so even government advertising has to fight the switch that flips off in our heads when we’re faced with more of the same. “Making it new” is important, to peel away the accumulated layers of unconscious prejudice and rewire our synapses, just a slight bit.