Pakistan Railway now offers massage

On Thursday, July 23, 2009, Pakistan Railway put advertisements on leading national dailies after one of its trains was set on fire by violent protestors in Jhang to vent out their anger on accessive power outage and rising oil prices in the Country.

The irony of all this is not just that the word "message" was misspelled as "massage" which made Pakistan Railway the laughing stock throughout the country but the very fact it appeared on English newspapers. I wonder how many of those who had set the coaches on fire read English newspaper.

Jhang, where the coaches were set on fire, has the literacy of 37% and this incldues all those who can read or write a simple letter in any language, mostly Urdu I suppose. This 37% has less than a quarter who have attained ten years or more schooling. Jhang is in Western Punjab, the region where less than 1% population reads newspaper at all. And where "The News", one of the newspaper which carried the advertisment, is read by 1% of all those who read newsapper at all. So let's say Jhang has a population of 10,000 then only 100 people read any newsaper daily and of these just 1 would have proably seen the infamous advert by Pakistan railway. All this boils down to one question whic his what effect this infamous advert had? It definitely carried a huge cost of hundreds and thousands of ruppes. The advert had to be reprinted the very next day due to the misspellings and carried additioanl cost. It also made Pakistan Railway the laughing stock in a nation which is certainly deprived of light moments lately. What else? I wonder.