Balika Vadhu

BALIKA VADHU is the new show being telecast on Colors channel. We see Rajasthan as a state with havelis, sand and deserts, forts, lakes and the men with royal moustaches and women with ghagra cholis and matkas on their heads with jewellery bedecked bodies hear the Rajasthan dialect. We do not see it as a backward region or state.

Also the western world, the foreign tourist views Rajasthan as a place where there are palaces, rajas and maharajas and traditional events like camel racing and they also look forward to having Rajasthani cuisine.

The new idiot box entertainment channel Colors launched itself with few advertisements in daily newspapers and highlighted the serial ready to be telecast. Balika Vadhu started with a stark reality of our times, child marriage which is prevailing in the remote villages of Rajasthan where society lives on its own centuries old customs.

However the child marriage is opposed by a teacher, a woman herself and the matter is taken up to the District Collector but the glamorous child marriage has taken place and now the theme has shifted to the same old saas bahu type episodes.

Further the dialect spoken over again and again makes the serial a regional favourite and cannot be watched by national viewers who may not understand or follow the vocabulary. Also the child artists portrayal is not in conformity with the upbringing of children in our Indian joint families and also the naughty little bride is addressing her now child husband by his name which does not go down well with the viewers as in India the wives do not take the name of their husbands even in urban set up leave aside the rural village shown here Child marriage is now being glamourised and children who are studying in junior school are talking about having a wife and how they shall rule over their lovely young and nubile child wives. The young girls are also feeling that they should marry at any early age and feel that they also would get into romantic involvements with their would be husbands. All these episodes are shown at the end of the serial in form of a caption, which carries some kind of social message or warning which is not read by these children and the parents of small children have started to worry about their young girls entering teenage early in life and this is giving them sleepless nights. All these social messages were only good in the old and golden days of black and white television when these child marriage evil was telecast by the national broadcaster Doordarshan as a documentary. The serials like these should be shown as a short film over Doordarshan in the proper category where the social message is conveyed in a short span and the influence over young minds gets over once they move out from the cinema halls.