The recently launched TV show Pehredaar Piya Ki on Sony is facing flak for showing a love story between an 18-year-old woman and a 10-year-old boy. But the real question that comes to my mind is how come the standard of Indian shows has fallen down so much?
The youth today is inclined towards watching the English TV serials like Game Of Thrones, Friends, Thirteen Reasons Why, House Of Cards and more. I never wanted to watch them but these Indian shows actually made me shift towards the English ones. The Indian Daily Soaps that come now, have much more regressive content, replete with illogical plot twists, cringe worthy background music and oh so sanskaari lead characters. But this is not the worse part. The worse part is that such shows have better TRPs than the ones which are better in terms of content.
Also, many shows which start with a story, fall in the game of ratings. Sasuraal Simar Ka and Naagin, one of the highest TRP grossing shows, have nothing except the over sanskaari leads, illogical supernatural twists(in the case of Sasuraal Simar Ka) and a stupid story line of an Icchadhaari Naagin. Similar is the case with the shows like Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai, Saath Nibhana Saathiya where the people don’t get aged even after their children start ageing, people get kidnapped so easily like it is a game, leads getting alive after death and what not? We talk about feminism being a major movement and these serials blatantly mock the very concept of respect and liberty of females. Women clad in pallus, spending all the time in cooking, cleaning and aartis and following what the evil mother in law instructs. Rarely it is shown that the woman is independent. Is this not conformation to patriarchal norms?
There were some shows, like Balika Vadhu and Udaan which started on a good premise of raising voice against child marriage and bonded labour respectively, but later fell into the game of TRPs, converting into a saas bahu drama.
I don’t think it is the mistake of the TV show makers. The problem lies with us, the viewers. The TRPs of such shows soar, why? Because the audience wants to watch them. This is the reason why the makers come with more regressive and cringe worthy concepts, as they earn money from it. If we want such shows to stop and better content to come up, we need to stop watching the shows with such ideas. Only then the standard of Indian shows will rise.