বশবয়নর যগ বজঞপন ও ভগবদ চতনর নরমণ: নরবচত বল ছটগলপর দরপণ

This paper undertakes a critical literary examination of advertising as a cultural and ideological apparatus within the socio-economic context of globalization, with particular reference to selected Bengali short stories written from the late twentieth century onwards.Rather than approaching advertising as a neutral or purely commercial phenomenon, the study conceptualizes it as an active agent of neoliberal capitalism that reshapes subjectivity, desire, social relations, and everyday life.The advent of economic liberalization in India in the early 1990s marked a decisive shift in market dynamics, facilitating the aggressive entry of corporate capital and consumer culture into the private and psychological domains of individuals.The paper further explores how language itself becomes a site of ideological intervention, as everyday speech is increasingly infiltrated by brand names, slogans, and hybrid linguistic forms.Television and visual media function as crucial mediators in this process, producing a culture of endless desire and emotional detachment.Individuals are gradually reduced to consumers and, ultimately, to marketable entities within a commodified social order.Bengali short fiction, as examined in this study, emerges as a critical space that exposes the contradictions of globalization and the psychological dislocations produced by consumer capitalism.While these narratives do not offer solutions or redemptive alternatives, they articulate a sustained intellectual discomfort that challenges the seductive certainties of advertising discourse.The paper argues that such literary representations are essential for understanding the cultural consequences of neoliberal globalization and the subtle mechanisms through which advertising exercises power over contemporary life.