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A little girl with a most winsome smile given in marriage to a rural household has a nation glued to the box, lapping up its purposeful social message against child-brides.

DESPITE a high-voltage campaign against child marriage, the practice is far from being eliminated, especially in the Hindi heartland.

At a conservative estimate, over half a million child marriages take place annually without nary a thought for the law, which explicitly prohibits such unions and prescribes a hefty penalty and imprisonment for the offenders.

It obviously takes more than a legal decree to end centuries-old social ills. Societies evolve rather slowly. Several factors from education and awareness to general economic prosperity can bring about the necessary change.

Paradoxically, the same society which witnesses nearly 50% of its annual marital alliances solemnised well below the legal age of marriage – 18 for girls and 21 for boys – has lapped up a television serial which is a direct assault against this pernicious practice.

The super-duper success of Balika Vadhu, a daily serial, is also the reason for the popularity of the recently-launched television channel, Colors.

The serial, whose main character is a little girl who is married before she attains puberty to an equally young groom, has riveted the eyeballs of a huge number of Indians since its launch in July.

Sociologists might like to explore the reasons for its success in a society which, as a rule, looks the other way when 10- and 12-year-old girls are made to tie the nuptial knot, often with males twice or thrice their age.

Also, in a number of cases even the groom is below the legal age of marriage when bound in matrimony to a child-bride.

If the practice is so widespread that ordinary people accept it as a necessary evil, then what explains the serial's stupendous success.

Or is it like the staple Bollywood fare which invariably focuses on the good overcoming the evil? And yet in real life most cine-goers continue to indulge in all the malpractices prevalent in society, be it the generation of black money, bribes, cheating, et al.

The popular endorsement of evil meeting its comeuppance at the hands of a just and fair hero on the big screen would make you believe that there is revulsion against wrong-doing.

Yet, once outside the cinema hall, audiences go back to being their normal selves, cutting moral and legal corners. It is this dichotomy in social behaviour which the success of Balika Vadhu has exploited to the hilt.

The serial is popular not only in urban centres like Delhi, Mumbai, etc., but also in the rural hinterland in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh – the cow-belt states where the practice of child marriage is most prevalent.

Enough of pop sociology. A word about the serial now. It is about a little girl with a most winsome smile, called Anandi, who is given in marriage to a rural household ruled with an iron-fist by a matriarch who brooks no opposition.

Her cute little innocent ways, her struggle to continue school after marriage and its disruption later, her equally naive husband, make for eminently watchable prime time television.

Not a typical saas-bahu (mother-in-law, daughter-in-law) fare, the serial still retains a strong element of the confrontation generally present in traditional homes between a martinet matriarch and a long-suffering newly-wed daughter-in-law.

In Balika Vadhu, there is a parallel track to the enchanting Anandi's struggle to cope with her suddenly altered circumstances. The elder son of the family is married a second time after his first wife, also a child bride, died while giving birth to a stillborn baby.

The second wife is young enough to be the daughter of the man she is married to due to her parents' extreme poverty. But she is a bit of a rebel and challenges her mother-in-law whenever the latter is unreasonable, which is most of the time.

While Anandi wins over audiences with her cute ways and obeys her mother-in-law – she is too small to protest – her sister-in-law defies her dictatorial mother-in-law.

Aside from keeping the audiences glued, the serial is meaningful television. It depicts the societal wrongs of child marriage, young widows, sexual mismatch, loss of childhood, child-women as chattels in matrimonial homes, pitfalls of child birth, without ever being preachy.

It doesn't moralise, doesn't hector. Yet, it manages to send across a powerful social message.

Thanks to the serial, the young Anandi – Avika Gor in real life – has become a household name.

Attired in traditional matrimonial finery, complete with an over-sized nose ring, she is seen staring from big billboards advertising the new channel and, of course, Balika Vadhu.

Interviewed the nth time by print and television media, it turns out that she is the youngest actor the nation has fallen in love with.

Asked about her ambition, she did not bat an eyelid to say it was to become Miss World or Miss Universe – and then, presumably, follow others before her like Aishwarya Rai, Sushmita Sen and Priyanka Chopra into mainstream Bollywood stardom.

Talking of paradoxes, the success of Balika Vadhu, has led to the demise of several long-running saas-bahu serials on various general entertainment channels.

Among the victims is the Ekta Kapoor-owned serial factory which named all its serials beginning with the letter K on astrological grounds.

Indeed, the Star channel, owned by Rupert Murdoch, terminated its long-term contract production contract with Kapoor after her family soaps began to return poor viewership ratings.

Even the old and always reliable mythological serials such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata had begun to induce a sense of fatigue among television viewers.

The success of Balika Vadhu – or is it really the winning appeal of its cute little child-bride – marks the maturity of television audiences. They can accept a serial with a purposeful social message provided it is well done.

Considering that there are a dozen general entertainment channels competing for the nation's eyeballs at prime time, it is no mean achievement that a well-produced serial with child actors depicting one of the perennial social evils should take audiences by storm.

Colors, the channel showing Balika Vadhu notched up the number two slot within weeks of its launch due to that lovely little girl called Anandi.

Source : The Star Online

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