Item Numbers are Bollywood music videos made with raunchy visuals and vulgar lyrics objectifying and degrading women to promote movies. These ungraded videos are aired on television all day and can be viewed by all audiences, including children.

Therein lies the problem. Especially, in a country where 92 women are raped every day and rapes by juveniles have risen by 143% according to the National Crime Bureau 2013 Annual Report.

The problem is so deep-rooted that people don’t even recognise it.

Children perform to these Item Numbers at school Annual Days, birthday parties, reality shows and even before guests at home.

So, we decided to use ‘reverse psychology’ to get our idea across by putting children directly in to the centre of the problem.

We bought a famous Item Number song and shot a typical video. But, with a disturbing twist.

It featured young boys mimicking what adult men do in these videos.

The film was released on YouTube on 30th April, 2016 and followed up by a post on Facebook.

The conclusion of the film led the viewers to a petition page on Change.org where they could sign the petition to ‘Re-grade Item Numbers’.

We had 1 signature every 5 minutes on an average on the petition page.

Scoop Whoop and BuzzFeed featured the video and this was shared over and over by several people. Bollywood stars took to the cause and tweeted about the same.