When festival marketing punches down on India’s most vulnerable children and families 

Summary: A Raksha Bandhan ad built a physical dustbin around the taunt “picked up from the garbage” — and no single Indian regulator was built to stop it. ASCI can only recommend, not compel; the CCPA’s consumer-protection powers have never been tested on an argument like this; CARA has no jurisdiction over advertisers at all; and India’s criminal code doesn’t recognise adopted, abandoned, or institutionalised children as a protected group. This piece traces one campaign through the regulatory blind spots it exposed, contrasts it against an ad that handled adoption with real care, and makes the case for closing the gap before next festival season produces a repeat. 

This Raksha Bandhan, Swiggy took to the streets of Lucknow with an on-ground activation called “Kooda Se Uthaye.” The concept: build a physical dustbin-style installation stamped with the line “Kooda se uthaye siblings ko treat dedo” — give a treat to the sibling who was “picked up from the garbage” — and invite people to order gifts through the app to make up for years of this childhood taunt. 

It was pitched as playful nostalgia. But what reads as harmless ribbing between siblings who share a home and a bloodline reads very differently to a child who actually was found, surrendered, abandoned, or adopted — and to the parents who built their family around that child. Swiggy wasn’t alone: Zepto ran its own Raksha Bandhan campaign, a couple of years back, “Shagun Ka Lifafa,” mining a different but equally sensitive family tradition for virality. Together, they point to a pattern in India’s food-delivery sector of treating sensitive family relationships as raw material for festival-season buzz, with little thought for who gets caught in the blast radius. 

Why this isn’t “just a joke” 

Banter only works when both people are laughing. For a specific, sizeable population in India, this is not banter; it’s a description of their actual life. 

India’s Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) recorded 4,515 adoptions in FY 2024-25, the highest in twelve years, with roughly 5,022 more in FY 2025-26. Behind each of those numbers is a child whose origin story a national brand just turned into a punchline. Roughly 30,000 prospective adoptive parents are on CARA’s waiting list at any time, against only 2,000-2,500 available children. These are families who have sat through home studies, counselling, and multi-year waits, all to build a family in exactly the way this campaign mocks. 

Then there are the children the campaign describes most literally. Government data submitted to the Supreme Court recorded over 30,000 children as orphaned or abandoned on the NCPCR’s       (National Commission for Protection of Child Rights) Bal Swaraj portal during the pandemic alone, and the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) has reported a 25% rise in such children registered on the CARINGS portal between 2020-21 and 2022-23. This is the country as it exists right now, and some of these children will see this campaign, its hashtags, and its comment sections. 

What responsible marketing looks like? 

Indian advertising has told adoption stories well before. In 2017, Vicks’ #TouchOfCare campaign told the real story of Gayatri, adopted by Gauri Sawant, a transgender activist who could not legally adopt under Indian law at the time. The film didn’t reach for a joke: it sat with the relationship and let the constraints Sawant faced make an emotional case for family built on care rather than blood or law. It was moving precisely because it treated adoption as something worth taking seriously. 

That contrast is the point. The difference isn’t between brands that address adoption and brands that don’t; it’s between brands that treat the subject with weight, and brands that reach for it as a convenient taunt because it’s culturally recognisable and easy to make viral. The Vicks ad proves the first approach is also better marketing: it generated genuine resonance without needing to mock anyone. 

The regulatory gap this exposes 

No single Indian authority is positioned to stop a campaign like this quickly, and none individually cover the full picture. 

ASCI (Advertising Standards Council of India), India’s advertising self-regulator, can recommend an ad be withdrawn but has no statutory power to compel compliance. CCPA (Central Consumer Protection Authority), under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, has real enforcement teeth, but its framework wasn’t built with “advertising that stigmatises a vulnerable group” specifically in mind. CARA and the MWCD have the deepest subject-matter expertise, but their reach extends to adoption agencies and processes; not to advertisers, who fall outside their jurisdiction entirely. AAAI and the agency ecosystem sit closest to where these campaigns are actually conceived, but have no formal touchpoint with CARA to get sensitised before a campaign goes to print. And India’s criminal code, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, has a provision (Section 196) criminalising ridicule of a “community”, but that term has only been interpreted around religion, race, caste, and region. It offers no protection to a group defined by adoption or abandonment, however identifiable and vulnerable.  

None of these bodies currently talks to the others fast enough to stop a campaign before it’s gone viral and quietly disappeared a week later with no lasting consequence. Indian civil society has held brands accountable before: Layer’r Shot withdrew ads criticised for normalising predatory behaviour after public and government pressure; Kalyan Jewellers apologised after backlash over a colourist ad. Both show that when public and institutional pressure align, brands move fast; the tools exist, they just need equal force here. 

Not every withdrawal reflects genuine harm, though. Tanishq’s 2020 ad depicting a Hindu bride’s Muslim in-laws hosting her baby shower was pulled within days after a coordinated campaign falsely accused it of “love jihad.” That episode is a useful caution: regulation here must be anchored in genuine, measurable harm to a real and vulnerable group (as with adopted and abandoned children), not simply whichever campaign draws the loudest online mob. 

What coordinated regulation could look like? 

Closing this gap doesn’t need a new bureaucracy; just making existing pieces talk to each other, with sharper teeth in a few places: 

A binding advisory, not just a voluntary code is needed. MWCD and CARA empowered to tell advertisers and media platforms plainly that a child’s adoption or abandonment history is off-limits as comic material, backed by real referral power to ASCI and CCPA. A statutory hook in the Juvenile Justice Act giving CARA, NCPCR, and State Commissions standing to formally investigate such campaigns, instead of leaving it to individual citizens to petition three or four bodies separately. Proactive industry engagement is a must, such as CARA and AAAI (Advertising Agencies Association of India) sensitising agencies before a campaign is greenlit, not after it’s generating outrage. A criminal-law update to BNS Section 196, adding “family status arising from adoption, abandonment, or institutional care” as a protected ground, so this conduct can actually be tested against the law. And public transparency; every advisory and referral CARA makes should be published, building a visible pattern of accountability instead of each incident vanishing into a quiet apology. 

The point isn’t to end humour 

None of this argues against brands using humour or festival banter; Zomato and Blinkit’s print “sibling rivalry” this same season worked precisely because it played on a harmless family dynamic that describes no one’s actual trauma. Cadbury, in the same festive window, used AI-personalised films to spotlight small retailers hit hard by the pandemic. This is proof that festival marketing doesn’t need cruelty to go viral; generosity travels just as far. Swiggy acknowledge the issue but haven’t committed to action” a public apology, campaign withdrawal and a written promise of not repeat such events in future as on date.  

The line isn’t between funny and serious. It’s between a joke everyone in on it can laugh at together, and one that only works because it’s aimed at people who can’t opt out of hearing it. Adopted children, the families who chose them, and the thousands still waiting in institutional care did not sign up to be anyone’s punchline. The regulatory system meant to protect them ( ASCI, AAAI, CCPA, CARA, MWCD, and the law itself) needs to move fast enough, and speak with one enough voice, to make sure the next “Kooda Se Uthaye” never gets made. 

Author Bio 

Vidyadhar Prabhudesai is an Indian entrepreneur and social-impact advocate. He co-founded LeadCap Ventures, which has worked with the United Nations, World Bank, World Economic Forum and governments across Asia, Africa and Europe. He is also co-founder of the Adopt India movement, which champions adoption reform for orphaned and abandoned children, and campaigns for India’s proposed Infant Protection Act. Prabhudesai is the founding curator of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Community and a former youth consultant to the Asian Development Bank. He holds fellowships from the US Department of State, the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the Ford Foundation, the Royal Society of Arts and the Commonwealth Foundation, and is an alumnus of Thunderbird School of Global Management. Vidyadhar received Thane Gaurav, the second highest civilian award by Thane Municipal Corporation, and the World Bank’s Prize for impacting more than 10 million youth across India.