Adidas, Reebok and Nike will be responsible for shoes hurled at leaders

After hounding Google, Facebook and other internet cos for censoring the web, the Indian government has now trained its eyes on shoe makers Reebok, Adidas and Nike.

Thursday morning saw shoe makers across India receiving notices from the Indian government asking them to come up with concrete action plans to monitor use of their shoes by end users. Sources claim that the government wants to make shoe makers liable for misuse of their products by consumers and wants them to implement measures to prevent people from throwing shoes at politicians or their paid cronies.

Ek aur phenko - campaign poster

“You and your entity vide the contents of this notice are hereby directed to ensure that you and your entity implement measures designed to counter and prevent misuse of your products. Misuse herewith in this context refers to shoes being thrown, hurled or even aimed at leaders, political luminaries and party functionaries or anyone connected with a political party or affiliates thereof within the boundaries of this country,” the notice stated.  

The notice also says that all shoe makers operating in India will have to come up with measures to monitor their shoes post-purchase. Further, shoe makers will also have to incorporate design changes in their products to make them less aerodynamic and increase air resistance to make sure that the shoes don’t fly that well. Shoe makers will be held responsible for misuse of their shoes and will be penalized heavily for every instance of shoe misuse. Shoe makers may even lose their license to sell in case their shoes are used in multiple instances of shoe throwing.

The shoe manufacturers refused to go on record with their comments on the development. A spokesperson for a German shoe maker speaking anonymously said “it will be difficult, if not impossible, for us to implement such a measure. I mean how do we know what you do with a shoe once we sell it? We have a mechanism in place by which we impound the shoes of those who are planning to do mischief and admit it.  But otherwise it is very difficult to zero in on those who will be misusing shoes in anyway”.

The shoe makers have been given time till March 1st 2012 to respond to the notice.

Humor Unplugged has learnt that a major ad campaign planned by a shoe maker that encourages people to throw shoes at their leaders has now been canned. The “Ek aur phenko” campaign designed to capture the anger of Indian youth towards their leaders will not be launched anytime soon, in wake of the notice, a source said. The shoe maker apparently wanted to increase sales by asking youngsters to throw shoes at leaders they hate.