I agree w/ Vikrant_fan above. In some of the stories, there are issues w/ the girl in question, which make marriage a better option than independence. Bharti is one here for the reasons mentioned above, and in the other Imagine shows, in Rakt Sambandh, Sandhya is blind, which is why her father wanted her married. But in Jyoti, she was doing fine w/o marriage until she married Pankaj; after that, since she was pregnant and refused to abort, not marrying was a bad option, as she would have ended up a single-mom. In the concluded DHKJ, there was no reason for Preeti to marry - particularly no reason to force her into a marriage w/ Suryakamal. Similarly, in Bandini, there was no reason to force Santo to marry a man older than her father, even though fans of that show now celebrate their romance.
There are positive role models in some of the shows, but they are by no means the lead, and in some cases, downright evil (like Bhairavi in Jyoti). In Bandini, Birwa is one such model, and in RS, Sakshi is (even though she married, hers was a love marriage w/ an office colleague, and now she has 2 kids). But in Sarvagunn Sampann, Swara was doing fine b4 marriage, but her parents were bellyaching over her not marrying, and today, her first marriage ended, and she's now in a live-in relationship. A lot of these shows would have done well by having leads w/ successful careers, rather than just be a wife or bahu of the house.