Airtel Controversy Is One Of The Examples Of Bigotry On Display
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Bharti Airtel embroiled themselves in controversy as one of their customers denied talking to a Muslim representative because of his religion. Further, she asked Airtel to provide her with a Hindu representative to resolve her problem. After which another Airtel representative took the Twitter thread forward. This reaction of Airtel generated anger in many, as they accused Airtel of not standing up for discrimination on the religious lines. More than airtel’s wrong handling, we need to see this case as where a citizen is flaunting her bigot behavior.


What happened

On Monday evening, a woman named Pooja, who is a Direct-to-Home (DTH) customer of Airtel expressed her displeasure on the Airtel’s Twitter handle about the problem she faced and how badly one of Airtel representative behaved with her.

After which the Airtel telecom service providers generated a standard response. The Airtel Bharti representative assured her of proper assistance and told her that the company would take a closer look at the matter.



A resident of Lucknow, Pooja was dissatisfied with Airtel’s response as it was sent by a ‘Muslim’ Representative Shoaib. Further, she asked for a ‘Hindu’ representative as she did not believe in the work ethics of Muslims.

In response to her above complaint, Airtel responded with another Airtel customer representative named Gaganjot.



This response of Airtel gathered a lot of negative attention from the people. Subsequently, a lot of people started accusing Airtel Bharti of not standing against ‘bigotry.’ Some threatened Airtel of giving up their Airtel connection.



Jammu and Kashmir minister Omar Abdullah, was among many other people who expressed their anger, tweeted:



Hours later, by the time damage was done and Airtel had already gained a lot of criticism, it responded saying that they don’t encourage discrimination.



“The first tweet (posted by Shoaib) was a standard response. As per procedure, if a customer is not happy with a resolution officer, another person takes over. We are not pandering to anyone’s religious biases,” said an Airtel spokesperson, while speaking to the First Post.

However, many see Airtel response as a reaction to the backlash they received on Twitter.



The Logical Indian Take

While many have criticised Airtel’s handling of the customer request, it is still disheartening to see how the hatred against one community has seeped so much into the public conscience. A citizen asking a corporate company to provide a representative of a certain religion can be called ‘bigotry on full display’. We as a nation should be proud of the diversity and should respect every human being irrespective of his/her religion. We cannot ascertain if the customer representative was changed intentionally or it was just providing representatives on first come first serve basis but it can be said that the Airtel customer representative who handled the request may not have understood the full implications of his decision.

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Editor : The Logical Indian

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