Indian politician Brinda Karat has demanded that the Google website be banned in India for showing ads of clinics that help parents determine the sex of their baby during the pregnancy stage. The law of the land says:
The Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act prohibits determination and disclosure of the sex of foetus. It also prohibits any advertisements relating to pre-natal determination of sex and prescribes punishment for its contravention. The person who contravenes the provisions of this Act is punishable with imprisonment and fine.
Since this looks like a punishable offence, Brinda has made an additional demand – the chief of Google India website be "arrested and prosecuted immediately" for the violation.
Google on their part have denied posting such ads on their website – "In India, we do not allow ads for the promotion of prenatal gender determination or preconception sex selection."
The interesting part is that Brinda’s claim isn’t entirely incorrect.
The moment I published this story, a Google AdSense Ad for "no-risk prenatal test" appeared in the sidebar of the blog as shown in the screenshot below. As I am seeing this page from India, Google algorithms should have ideally blocked that ad.
But yes, there were no ads for these topics on the main Google site.
Find this article at: http://labnol.org/?p=11465
Reader Comments
If I send such illegal SMS ads via my Airtel phone, will the police catch me or Sunil Mittal!??
Brinda Karat’s statements were stupid and aimed at gathering publicity..
Written by Anand Srinivasan on 12.04.09
what… ban google… she should have asked to ban advertisments…
idiot (indian) politician.
Written by Mark on 12.04.09
Good job Amit, especially the screenshot of search results page on google india
Written by debjit on 12.04.09
Right. That’s the solution to everything,isn’t it? Ban it.
If more people thought like Brinda Karat, I shudder to think what would happen to India. Has the lady even heard of asking people politely?
Written by vimoh on 12.04.09
Its like saying porn is banned in india. Doesnt mean they block all the sites out there…
Random ppl seeking attention zzz…
Written by Alfred on 12.04.09
politicians are really silly. they dont understand the power of technology. By the time the news would have gone public Google would have removed the ads from india.
BTW, @Amit- i see such ads in this page.. so will they ban Labnol.org also ;)
This is what i see.
Ads by Google
Baby Gender Test
Baby Ultrasounds
Google Maps
Gender Prediction
Written by naman on 12.04.09
Yea Amit, The other day I have seen that Google Earth is showing that Assam belongs to China. But even our Officials complained about it, the Google Officials simply taken it as a light issue. This is simply ridiculous.
Written by Siddartha on 12.04.09
To be frank, Brinda Kakar’s claim is totally baseless. Google is a search engine, not personal view expressing site. Even if I search “how to kill some stupid politician” it will even show results related to that.
Publicity stunts of politicians…god!
Written by Rishi Raj on 12.04.09
The PNDT act and the advertisement photograph do not clash at all. If you closely see, the ad says about paternity test. Of course I do not know where the ad leads, but the site has option for prenatal determination of gender.
That being said to rein internet in India is a bogus thing that only a Leftist Brain like Brinda Karat can think of.What about Techniques that come up as Organic search, should google block them too.
If ads are so much of a problem, then what about searching google images with safe search off.
She should she what her name Brinda or Karat come up with safe searches off.
But the Google a primarily US based company should be geo targeting according to the law of a land which is not draconian btw rather than the adwords user preference only.
Dr Bikash
Written by Dr Bikash on 12.04.09
She is man
If google is banned in India 80% of India’s web search will go down !
Written by Ashmeet Singh on 12.04.09
Oh Amith… These politicians. What can they actually do apart form Creating problems out of thin air, just because they don’t have anything else to do.
This is when I remember some verses from the popular poem “I am no body” by Emily Dickinson.
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
All these politicians want is to be some body and get the media spot light on them.
Written by Yohan Perera on 12.04.09
This is so shallow. If determining the gender of a foetus is a crime, shouldn’t the ban, in the first place, be on the clinics doing that. The govt. can actually get to those clinics through Google. Secondly, what would the government’s stand be when the information is not searched on Google but obtained from a ‘friend’?
Written by Prashant on 12.04.09
Is it actually an indian site or location doing the advertising.
Mrs Karat forgets that gender determination cannot be done online.
Written by rishi on 12.04.09
This is not google’s fault! The politicians should rather go against the clinics that determine foetus gender.
Written by Neeraj Shinde on 12.04.09
get your facts right Amit, our atleast correct it when someone alerts you of, in readers comments.
Prenatal tests of all kinds are NOT banned in India. But Prenatal SEX/gender determination is banned. The example you have shows prenatal dna testing which is used for paternity NOT for sex/gender determination. Please read comments to your blog and correct your blogs
Written by sam on 12.04.09
@sam – The example that I have shown here is for a site called dnaplus.com that does offer “Fetal Cell/DNA Prenatal Gender Test”.
From the site – “This prenatal gender test gives curious parents the option of knowing the gender of their baby as early as 10 weeks into the pregnancy. This test uses only the mother’s blood.”
Written by Amit on 12.04.09
Brinda’s remarks are a typical representation of the Archaic mentality of the communist toads.
Written by nagesh pai on 12.04.09
The next argument will be ban Internet….
Hats off to Indian Politics….
Written by Suraj on 12.06.09
No wonder, One day they will ask to ban internet.
Written by Ramkumar on 12.06.09
I really surprised to ,why she didn’t ask for a ban of total Internet. Stupid politicizations.
Written by Kiran on 12.07.09
And thus we have our next entrant into the “Idiot Politicians Hall of Fame”!
By the way, I wonder if she’s now going to call for your arrest too since technically the ads are now visible on your website too!
Run, Amit, run!
Written by Arnold D’Souza on 12.07.09