Children's Shows In India Need Reconsideration

Hey there,

So which shows did you watch as a kid? Obviously the once screened on Cartoon Network, Pogo, Nickelodeon and of course Disney.  When I was growing up I wasn’t allowed to watch a lot of television, which always frustrated me. I mean imagine everyone at school is talking about the latest episode of Noddy and you are sitting there clueless. Yep, that was pretty much how I lead my life till Mid-school.

And now life has turned 360 degrees. I see my younger sibling spending almost all of his time watching television. I decided to take a closer look at what is delivered to kids in India.In this post I will talk about kid’s show and  later I might talk about Indian daily soaps and movies. So lets jump right into it.

Most watched television shows in India    

 This is what I found out on Google

Ø  Doraemon

Ø  Ninja –Hattori

Ø  Chota Bheem

Ø  Harry and his bucketful of Dinosaur

Ø  Hagemaru

Ø   Chaplin

Ø  Roll no. 21

Ø  Pakdam  pakdai

Ø  Motu patlu

Ø  Haddi mera buddy

Here’s the thing, I will talk about only those shows whose content I am fully aware off and the shows I have personally watched.

Doraemon

I am sure all of us have watched the show or at least heard of it. The main characters in this show are: Nobita , Doraemon , Shizuka , Suneo and Gian.

What typically happens in this show is that Gian and Suneo insult Nobita . He gets angry and runs to Doraemon for help. Doraemon offers him gadgets hesitantly (because he know Nobita) is going to misuse them. Now what happens at the end of the show? Surprise, surprise, Nobita misuses the gadgets and lands into trouble.  And this goes on and on.

What I don’t understand about this show is that if Doraemon knows that Nobita will misuse the gadget then why does he give it to him?  Okay that’s not the main problem just got carried away.

What I despise about this show is the idea of dependence portrayed by Nobita, what this conveys is that being dependent on others is okay.  He never does his tasks himself; he is always dependent on Doraemon and his gadgets. Secondly, it conveys that crying is the solution to everything! Literally just cry, someone will take pity on you and solve your problems for you.

Okay, lets move on.

Chota Bheem

This was one of my favorite shows as a kid. The main characters include: Bheem(of course), chutki,Jaggu,Raju,Kalia, dholu-bholu, the king, the daughter of the king.

The content of this show is that there is always some trouble at Dholakpur (Setting of the show) everyone is tensed and guess what……Bheem solves the problem! So unpredictable right!  Even the most importance tasks such as security of the kingdom is performed by Bheem(who is 11/12 year old)

You might think what’s wrong with this show? Don’t worry I’ll answer this. What are the ministers doing in that kingdom? Why are they as lazy(leaving responsibilities  on that kid ) ,okay just kidding!

What is wrong with this show is that it does not offer any content worth watching!  It’s always Bheem fighting the villains! If they are unable to find a villain, Kalia (another one of the characters of the show) is always there.

The problem with these shows is that they will always show the slightly healthier child as the villain or the BAD GUY. This can be observed in many such as Doraemon, Chota Bheem, Roll no. 21 etc. This does affect the thinking of children.

My opinion on these shows

I have mentioned this earlier that most of the shows don’t have content worth watching.  We do not learn anything from these shows. In fact, at times it harms our behavior.

 Body shaming is one of the major issues of our society. Ever wondered where that comes from?  Yes, the media. As I have discussed earlier that the kids shows tend to represent the slightly healthier kids as the Bad people. This obviously becomes the mindset of the audience watching such shows. So is it entirely the fault of the child who gets involved in such activities? This is not it, there are many issues with these shows(e.g calling names) about which I will talk in my next blog.

I really wonder that is this the kind of knowledge we want the kids to be exposed to? I believe it is our right to ask for quality content and not just entertainment. Quality  content is absolutely necessary  because now a days  children spend a lot of their time watching television. We should strongly speak out against the content we think does not deliver quality.