Social context of Indian soap operas and women's issues

Shortly after the saas-bahu saga in star plus, the advent of social evil soap in colors adversely effected the social context of Indian culture, where a girl child being immersed in a bowl of milk in order to kill her and prayers being made that the same child will be reborn the next year as a male child which is just one scene from a new serial in India on female feticide. Set in rural Harayana, Na Aana Iss Des Lado (Do Not Come into This Land Dear Daughter) looks at the social evil of Female feticide that is rampant in some rural as well as urban parts of India. It premiered on May 9, 2009, on Colors, a new entertainment satellite channel in India. This soap opera is just one of a kind in a plethora of new soap operas that are currently flooding Indian television programming, and it has made it to the top ten most watched soap operas. However, due to falling television rating points (TRPs) and audience restlessness, the television Producers associated with Colors came up with a new mantra (recipe/formula) for soap operas that highlighted the social issues in Indian culture. The head of programming of Colors, Ashvini Yardi, concurs, "Seeing viewership fatigue in the tried and tested format of saas-bahu sagas", we chose to make serials that were issue based. This study will examine the extent to which soap operas with a social message associate positively or negatively with the social or personal issues of Indian women Indian television audience.