A new reality show in which a bunch of suitable men vie for the hand of Bollywood starlet Rakhi Sawant is an interesting twist on the prevailing custom of Indian men choosing their brides.

“Rakhi Sawant ka Swayamvar“, which harks back to the ancient tradition of princesses choosing a groom from a line-up, began airing on Monday night, pitting more than a dozen men from varied backgrounds — and with varying singing and dancing abilities — wooing Sawant, a colourful personality known more for her antics off camera.

It may be yet another publicity stunt for Sawant, who claims she will marry one of the men at the end of the series in a traditional wedding ceremony.

It may be yet another move by the channel, fighting for eyeballs and advertisers, to score high TRPs - or Television Rating Points that show how popular a programme is.

Still, it offers some respite from the female stereotyping on the Indian airwaves: from ads that show women as being incapable of any decision save the right cooking oil for the family, to shows that glorify child marriage and female foeticide under the guise of ushering in social change.

A soap featuring a child bride married at the age of eight claims it “very sensitively portrays the plight of children who are unwittingly forced into marriage, in the name of tradition”.

A brief blink-and-you-miss-it disclaimer at the end of the show says child marriage is illegal.

Competing for shock and awe value on the same channel is another soap that features a village where newborn baby girls are drowned in a pool of milk.

Not recommended viewing in a country where the gender ratio is so skewed in some states that it has set alarm bells ringing. The networks claim they are raising awareness of these “social evils”.

But that is not a primary concern; they have TRPs to deliver, viewers to satisfy and advertisers to please.

Sure, TV is capable of sparking debate and bringing about change, but for a casual viewer seeking an insight into how India treats its women, what’s on primetime telly is scarcely redeeming, is it?

Prime-time television in India is not really known for sensible content. Especially the soap operas. I have never been a fan but one tedious evening, I switched on the telly and sat through one “saas-bahu” serial after another.

What was it about family dramas that kept millions of Indian women glued to their TV sets each evening? I intended to find out.

In one such episode, a mother-in-law laments the loss of an unborn grandchild.

“We have lost our grandson and our daughter-in-law cannot bear a child after this. Now we will never have a grandson to take the family name forward.”

I wondered how the mother-in-law could be so sure the unborn child was male. Did she get a sex-determination test done? Or was it some divine revelation.

As the story of one serial after the other unfolded on screen, I realized that to be the “perfect” woman on Indian television, one needed to be a docile housewife and sacrifice everything for the family’s happiness.

Even if that meant putting up with philandering husbands.

Women who wear western clothes or work for a living invariably have loose morals, or so these soap operas would have you believe.

I am all for escapist TV and can forgive the sight of glamorous women going to bed in flashy saris and make-up.

But I find it hard to accept that millions of eyeballs are being exposed to such regressive programmes day after day.

Can the television industry shrug off its responsibility so easily in a country where killing of female foetuses is common and preference for sons runs deep?

In a report last year, the United Nations estimated that 2,000 unborn girls are illegally aborted every day in India.

Experts warn that fewer women will spark a demographic crisis in India which could lead to more crimes against women — as there would be fewer left to marry.

I am not asking television producers, many of whom are women and lead very different lives than that of their characters on the telly, to broadcast sermons on female foeticide.

But it will take them just a few changes in their scripts to conjure up a healthy dose of daily entertainment — without sending their audiences the wrong message.

I had a truly depressing day in Haryana this week, reporting on the murder of a 21-year-old girl and her 22-year-old boyfriend .

It was sad enough to meet a village where many appeared proud of this brutal murder. To come home and see the photos of Sunita and Jasbir, laid out outside her father’s house for all the world to see, was heartbreaking.

Fear still stalks the villages of Balla and Machhroli where the murders took place. Jasbir’s family have been threatened by other villagers that they will also be killed if they speak to the media or if they refuse to drop charges.

Few of them had faith in the police. They said they were “too poor to pay a bribe”.
Five people have been arrested, including the girl’s father, uncle and two cousins. I met another cousin, right on the spot where the bodies were laid out, who started by trying to intimidate us and ended up saying he was proud of the murder.

In a tiny police post, a corporal told me such cases rarely if ever reach prosecution. “Witnesses back out,” he told me. “The entire village is on one side”.

As I looked further into the story, I found that love liaisons like Sunita and Jasbir’s, between a couple from the same village, were a direct threat to the upper caste old men of Haryana.

A girl who dares marry against their will, and stay in her own village, might just mount a claim to a portion of the family’s land, as she is legally entitled to do.

Murders, so-called “honour killings”, are becoming increasingly common in Haryana, although rarely reported, sociologists say.

This is a state of rising wealth, but one where female foetuses are routinely aborted, where women appear to count for nothing, where an ancient patriarchal system has combined with a modern macho culture of the jeep, gun and bottle of rum.

Politicians say almost nothing against honour killings, police do little more. This time, I hope it will be different, that the police will show a little more determination to punish the culprits, and protect a family that has already suffered far too much.

On past experience, it is hard for me to be optimistic.