NEW DELHI - India hopes to shame its citizens out of spitting and littering at tourist sites with an advertising campaign showing schoolchildren looking dismayed and disapproving of the dirty habit.
The walls of countless buildings in India are streaked with dried red spit generated by people chewing paan, a mildly intoxicating preparation wrapped in a leaf and often containing betel nut and tobacco.
The tourism ministry wants to convince people to think of more discreet places to deposit their phlegm, and is spending 50 million rupees ($1.12 million) on a campaign to instill civic pride it says is widely lacking.
"Unfortunately spitting paan is considered an art in India," the ministry's Amitabh Kant told Reuters, adding that it was off-putting to many of the nearly 4 million foreign tourists that visit the country each year.
One of the adverts running in national newspapers shows four children looking distressed at the sight of a paan-splattered monument strewn with litter and covered with graffiti.
"What a shame that people like him have no respect for our heritage," one child says in a speech bubble, pointing an angry finger at a paan-chewing man on the brink of spitting.
The slapstick television and cinema campaign shows an Indian family tossing litter around the Taj Mahal and other famous tourist sites before being admonished by Shah Rukh Khan, a popular Bollywood actor.
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