New woman old trappings
Shoma A. Chatterji reviews the changing dynamics of women’s portrayal on television from their progressive depiction in Hum Log to their regressive characterisation in so-called cause-specific serials

Hum Log was India’s first long-running soap opera for development. It was produced by the government to raise women’s status and reduce their mistreatment

The history of television across the world has proved that the woman — as girl, woman and aged person, is trapped within an anonymity that reflects the anonymity she encounters in real life. Television’s image of woman, either as a patriarchal construct, or as a socio-historically differentiated product, is almost always made subservient to voyeuristic and fetishistic impulses. A woman’s character is predominantly constructed as totally non-contradictory, homogenous and unchanging.

Hum Log (1983) was India’s first long-running soap opera for development. It was produced by the government to raise women’s status and reduce their maltreatment. The idea was the brainchild of the then Information and Broadcasting Minister, Mr Vasant Sathe, who during a visit to Mexico in 1982, was impressed by the authorities’ use of soap operas to spread developmental messages. After the trip, the idea for Hum Log (People like Us) was developed in collaboration with writer Manohar Shyam Joshi and filmmaker P. Kumar Vasudev.

The soap attacked the dowry system, encouraged women to decide on the number of children they would have and promoted gender equality in the workplace (Singhal and Rogers, Television Soap Operas 109-26).

In an entertaining manner, Hum Log promoted equal status for women, family harmony and the small-family norm. An average of 50 million people watched each of the 156 episodes during the 17-month run in 1984 and 1985. It was the largest audience ever for a television programme in India.

Hum Log was produced by an independent production company at a cost of $6,000 to $12,000 per episode, funded by advertising revenue. It was telecast by Doordarshan, the government television network. Hum Log was evaluated by researchers from the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California. Research on the opera’s effects on Indian television viewers indicated that ethnicity, geographical residence, gender and Hindi language fluency were significant determinants of beliefs about gender equality.

After Hum Log came Rajani (1985-1986) where the crusader was presented first as a person and then as a woman. Why was the crusader presented as a woman? The reasons may be (a) a woman offered more attractive visuals than a man; (b) women viewers would find easy identification; (c) the basic message Rajani spread among women viewers was that they could solve their own problems if only they pushed themselves to it; and (d) sponsors would be able to use the same actress’ image to advertise their consumer goods, which they did.

After Hum Log and Rajani, Udaan set forth Doordarshan’s discourses on the New Indian Woman. Doordarshan created new stereotypes of women who rise above adversity, achieve success in fulfilling their individual goals, and channelise their energies towards selfless social activism. Udaan had a tremendous impact on the viewers. They were deeply impressed with Kalyani’s idealism and self-confidence , and they admired her courage to fight corruption from within the system. Kalyani became a household name. It was one of the first serials to showcase the empowerment of women against all kinds of gender discrimination and their struggles on the home front, on the societal front and on the professional front. Talking about the serial’s impact, Kavita Choudhary, the producer and main actress, said she was even invited by the IAS academy at Mussoorie to address young probationers on various aspects of public life, especially police officers, dealing with criminals and anti-social elements.

When small screen entertainment was privatised and many channels came into existence, women characters approximating reality began to fade away in serials like Khandaan, Junoon, Swabhimaan and Tara, defining an alternative woman, who was sexually aggressive and promiscuous, conscious of her claims to the family business and property, yet martyred in the end as the ‘poor, victimised’ woman. Tara specially had an admirable female following whose approving comments usually centered on the phrase ‘woman power’. What this ‘power’ actually was raises its own question because the stereotypes offered by such soap operas such as Swabhimaan and Tara still focussed on sexuality and sex appeal.

In the 21^st century, one would have expected women characters to be more progressively depicted than before. But this has not happened. We have been preview to regressive women, a return to the extended feudal family with property and inheritance disputes, illicit children, illegitimate relationships at times bordering on incest, and the focus on beauty, tonnes of gold and stone-crusted jewellery, faces made up so heavily that all women characters begin to look similar, creating what Uma Chakrabarti terms ‘the homogenous woman’.

Thankfully, the focus in 2008-2009 has shifted from the Tulsis and the Parvatis of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki to Anandi, the little bride in Balika Vadhu and her child-husband Jagdish. And there has been an instant positive offshoot. Having watched Balika Vadhu, Rekha, a 12-year-old beedi worker’s daughter in West Bengal, refused to become a child bride.

Saas-bahu soaps are pass`E9. Every other daily soap being aired on various channels upholds a specific cause for the social and legal uplift of the girl child. Na Aana Is Desh Meri Laado is about infanticide. Agle Janam Mohe Bitiya Hi Kijo is about how low-caste poor families sell their young girls to ward off poverty. Girl-brides are killed with impunity and their murder is passed off as suicide. Laali’s angry questions about the sudden death of her best friend just before her gauna are hushed up.

Not only the characters but even the locales shown in most soaps are quite authentic. Agle Janam... is being shot in Godewadi, a village that stands a kilometre away from Wai, very similar in its physical ambience to a Bihar village. Protagonist Laali, the eldest of three siblings, lives with her poor parents. Her father is a rat-catcher. In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, there are still zamindars who hire them and pay them in lieu of the number of rats killed. Ratan Rajput, the girl who plays Laali, belongs to Patna, Bihar.

Balika Vadhu is about child marriage and also touches upon the heart-rending tragedy of child-widows and on the complete subservience of women in extended, feudal families. But its message — of fighting child marriage, gets diffused in the maze of the patriarchal backdrop. The social cause takes a bad beating when the content is closely reviewed. At times, the titles, the setting, social relationships and ambience of these serials are so ambiguous that they make one question the integrity of the very cause they promote. They are rooted in the total submissiveness of women in the family. One wonders when and where the final awareness will come.

Naa Aana Is Desh Meri Laado talks about the ugly practice of female infanticide. It showed spine-chilling promos of a female infant being drowned in a milk vessel, a fictional account of real-life practices in Rajasthan.

A recent entrant into this virtual flood is Sabki Ladli Bebo. It underscores the importance of the girl child. It was launched in association with Project Nanhi Kali. The project was started by the K. C. Mahindra Education Trust formed late K.C. Mahindra in 1953 with a vision of "transforming the lives of people through education, by providing financial assistance and recognition to them, across age groups and income strata."

"Of late, a number of TV serials are focussing on issues linked to the girl child in an interesting manner. Viewership is huge and , therefore, they serve as an excellent medium not only to send out the intended message, but also to influence the audience to support girls.`A0 It is extremely important to project a positive image of women. Hence our association with the TV serial, Sabki Ladli Bebo," says Nalini Das of Nanhi Kali.

"Through a comprehensive sponsorship programme, the project focuses on providing academic and material support to the economically and socially disadvantaged girl child, so that she not only attends school with dignity, but also achieves grade-specific learning competencies," she adds. 

Sabki Ladli Bebo is about a family who is desperate to get a daughter after three sons. When the girl finally arrives, she is named Bebo and is everyone’s ladli. Bebo fills the Narang family with happiness and sunshine. But soon, she comes face to face with harsh realities that change to adversity.

Bandini is another serial which is about a young girl married off to a man much older than her.

The shifting of focus from bejewelled, zardozi-clad politicking saas-bahu serials to girl centric serials has come at the right time. Data gathered by ActionAid from interviews with a representative sample of more than 6,000 households shows that sex ratios have dropped.

In Punjab among the upper caste Jat Sikh community, the ratio was merely 500 girls for every 1000 boys in the rural areas. In urban Punjab among Brahmins the ratio is a shocking 300. In Himachal Pradesh and Punjab, researchers recorded a growing preference for having just one child.

"Squeeze on family size is fuelling the trend of ‘disappearing’ daughters. For households wanting only one child, they want to make sure it is a son," says ActionAid researcher, Jyoti Sapru. The study has been coordinated by ActionAid with the support of International Development Research Centre, Canada. Advisory board for the study comprises sociologists and demographers from Jawaharlal University, Delhi University and Centre for Women Development Studies.

Anchita Ghatak who leads ActionAid’s work on women’s rights stresses upon the significance of this study: "To reverse the decline in sex ratio we have to understand the reasons behind decisions to abort female foetuses: How economic and social factors such as property rights, dowries and gender roles are combining to condemn girls even before they are born. And how the government and civil society can work together to turn these tragic trends around."

But nothing seems to have changed for the better. In some ways, though television has fostered the spread of the liberation movement through its vast amount of coverage of women through seemingly ‘progressive’ talk shows, discussions, debate and detailed news reports. But at the same time, it has done more harm than good to women’s potential as individuals by putting female conformity to convention and tradition on the forefront.

Women and girls are subject to communication strategies that try to convince them to "role model" themselves after characters in scripts, rather than encourage them to see broader systems of gender dynamics or to engage in collective acts of resistance, to consumer culture, or to oppressive political systems.

The very structure of many of these programmes involves the "partnership" of private industry with development institutions ostensibly acting in the public interest. This "partnership" limits the potential for communication messages to engage in more controversial subjects and strategies. The integration of commercial products, in the name of the "public good" in these projects, draws attention away from potentially more environmentally-sound and politically-responsive solutions.