Hindi TV Serial - Desi Girl - A new reality show on Imagine TV, getting city girls to live in villages

The majority of India lives in its villages, and the life in villages is very different from that of its towns and cities. There are more activities related to agriculture, farming, animal care, getting water, etc than are present in cities (in fact, some of these activities are not even there in the cities). It is often said that true life in India is like that in the villages, and so you why not come up with a concept where you take city girls, unused to life in the villages, and make them do stuff in the villages and spin a reality show around it. So, you will have activities related to milking cows, dealing with the yuckiness of cow dung (including making cakes from this cow dung), cooking food in the traditional style (without the comfort of modern cooking styles).
So you take 8 glamorous girls from the modern city life (the girls being Sambhavna Seth, Kashmera Shah, Roshni Chopra, Monica Bedi, Anmol Singh, Rucha Gujarati, Ishitta Arun and Aushima Sawhney), and transplant them with rural families. The test - they have to show through numerous tasks that they are suitable for living in the 'real' India.
And then they go through numerous tasks, with a process of elimination removing them from the reality show one by one. Some of the other tasks that they would need to do are: bathing the cows and buffaloes, eating the oily food, washing clothes. In between, you can see that they are not used to doing tasks such as these and complain, but this is the format of the show and they have to do this. And like any other reality show, they all want to win and reach the end.

A sample video from the serial 'Desi girls' on Imagine TV:



Link to more videos on Youtube (link)

Devi - A slice of real life?

NDTV Imagine’s Devi in its first few episodes has shown promise in terms of story and treatment. Like most serials of today, it is also set in rural India and talks about the lives of poor villagers who are held ransom to faith, bad weather, lack of opportunities and an evil Thakur (landlord). It has so far been a telling commentary on some of the ills affecting rural India. On the one hand it talks of superstition and old belief patterns and those who exploit the poor in the name of both. On the other hand it brings to the fore the status of women in India’s villages. It talks of the double bind that women find themselves in terms of caste/class and gender.

A baby girl is born to a poor family and the father is forced to abandon the child because of his limited means. Coincidentally the day of her birth sees rainfall in the village after three consecutive years of drought. The village priest convinces the superstitious and God-fearing villagers that the baby is a reincarnation of the Goddess. As more people are convinced of her divine status, a small group of people are out to make money. Her own father and uncle fall in this category and the two in fact end up fighting about who gets to keep the lion’s share of the income she has generated. The villagers throng to catch a glimpse of her as they are convinced that she will rid all the ills of their lives. They even turn in their hard-earned money as offering. Thus as she cries lustfully in the hot sun as she is hungry, the superstitious villagers turn a deaf ear to her wails and keep chanting “Jai Devi”. Their false notions of divinity and reincarnation help them to ignore her cries of hunger and overlook the fact that she is only a hapless little thing.

In the same place where this baby girl is being hailed as a Goddess, her mother is being made a target of the landlords’ evil designs. The Thakur holds her father hostage while her mother begs for his life. The cruel man then decides to trade in the father’s life in exchange of the mother’s honour. The little girl’s mother is helpless-in terms of societal structure since she is located far below the Thakur being poor and a woman. The paradox of the situation is hard to miss-while on the one hand a little girl is being worshiped for being a divine reincarnation, the same child’s mother is being preyed upon for being a poor woman. The irony of the situation is something that is true not only to rural India but also urban India.