"Balika Vadhu"- an urban movement in the making?

Has anyone noticed how the girl-child is suddenly the favorite subject of the Indian cable television? To name a few, Colors has "Balika Vadhu" and "Lado", Star Plus and Zee TV each have "Ladli" and "Agle Janam Mohe Bitiya hi Kijo" and there is one more about a family that is yearning for the birth of a daughter called "Mere Ghar Aayi Ek Nanhi Pari".

What makes this phenomenon even more interesting is that each show has a completely different take on the status of the girl child in our society- sometimes even diametrically opposing views. While "Lado" and "Balika Vadhu" show the brute reality of what women have to face in rural India, promos of shows like "Ladli" and "...Nanhi Pari" promise to be shows where the girl is the darling of the house. In "Lado" a dictatorial matriarch in interior Rajasthan has no qualms about drowning a new born baby girl in a cauldron of milk because she is considered a burden and a curse. But in "Mere ghar..." Kulbhushan Kharbanda as the patriarch of the family is yearning for a daughter so that he can add "....& daughter" in the sign board outside his shop.

So which of these is the reality of modern day India? Do we love our little girls or do we still kill them at birth? The answer maybe that each reflects the truth. As much as we would like to deny it, child marriage and female infanticide are a reality of India. Girls are married young so as to ensure their subjugation and complete dominance over them right from childhood. They are killed because they are considered inferior and bring with them the burden of a dowry. So the shows that bring these issues to the front are portraying a hair-raising reality that we would all like to ignore.

But when we see families such as those in "Ladli" and "..Nanhi Pari" what we are seeing are individual households. Little islands of sanity amongst a dark sea of ignorance. But what we must notice is that these families are very much urban. Maybe not set in the metros but certainly not in villages. This same acceptance of the growing power of the girl child continues into a lot of the advertising on TV- be it the HDFC Standard Life TV spots that show a young girl supporting her father, or being the darling of a father who has dreams for her beyond marriage- to be an astronaut. Again primarily an urban message and setting.

So maybe we can conclude that urban India is waking up to the status of the girl child. It is using TV to give voice to what it realises the present is and what it wishes the future would be like. So while it makes us rage at the matriarchs of "Lado" and "Balika Vadhu" it also shows us families that love daughters. Let us hope that however small this step maybe (cable TV reaches no more than 20% of Indians) it is an indication of a larger wave to come.