On the self-evident grounds that you are probably as fed up as I am of hearing journalists hold forth on Anna Hazare
and the middle-class awakening – and because this is supposed to be a media column – I thought I would take a break from the endless battle against corruption
and the valiant efforts of Anna Hazare’s men and women to push their draft of the Lok Pal Bill through Parliament to focus on yet another middle-class awakening.
I refer, of course, to sex.
For as long as I can remember, sex was a taboo subject for the middle class. We never talked about it. Our government assisted us in this endeavour by obligingly banning any film that had even a whiff of sex about it. And the information and broadcasting ministry was so vigilant about the barest flash of breast on television that, way back in the days when Sushma Swaraj was I&B minister, I even wrote a column about the ‘nipple police’ and their battle to make sure that none of us thanked Fashion TV for the mammaries.
It is almost a truism that, in the age of the Internet, many of these taboos make little sense. These days, an adolescent boy with a healthy libido and a laptop can cruise the Internet and find porn sites that will show him things that his parents never dreamt ever existed. When access to media is so absolute, the job of the censor becomes more and more difficult. Anybody who is denied a glimpse of bosom on Fashion TV can just go on to the Internet and see things that would never ever make their way to television.
Even so, I do believe that there is a silent revolution that is taking place in the middle-class attitude to sex and this revolution is not taking place on desktops and laptops as some kind of private activity. It is out there for everyone to see on Indian television.
If you talk to programmers at Indian television channels, you will find that they are obsessed with making their channels seem cool to a completely new demographic. They don’t care so much about the yuppies who once bought cars, refrigerators and other consumer durables and were so sought-after by advertisers. Instead, they are looking at 18 to 25 year olds who have just moved up from what used to be derisively referred to as the working class and have entered the realms of the lower reaches of the middle class. Given the nature of projections about India’s economic growth over the next decade, advertisers believe that these are the yuppies of tomorrow. These are the people who, having suddenly found wealth, will blow it up on discretionary purchases in the years to come.
| "My point is this: for ages we believed that no matter how much sex took place at the fringes of the middle class, it would never become a mainstream activity to talk about sex." |
Asked to cater to this demographic, many channels have decided that it is not worth the effort to win their hearts. It is much easier to win over their crotches.
And so, over the last couple of years, the raunch factor has increased on Indian television. When MTV was first launched in India, it contented itself with telecasting Michael Jackson videos. Now, such shows as Roadies swerve dangerously close to the edge, giving us entertainment that is far from safe and sanitised. The whole mission statement of UTV Bindaas appears to be: If you’ve got them by their crotches, their hearts and minds will surely follow. Even troubled general entertainment channels like Imagine are hoping to win viewers by making such stars as Rakhi Sawant tackle subjects like homosexuality and lesbianism among the middle class, at prime time.
I offer no value judgements about this trend. Some of you may see it as a move towards vulgarity and crassness. Others might argue that a new generation and a new middle class seeks a new approach to sexual matters.
My point is this: for ages we believed that no matter how much sex took place at the fringes of the middle class, it would never become a mainstream activity to talk about sex.
That belief is now dead. Suddenly, sex is the new currency. It has escaped from the fringes and now inhabits the mainstream. Forget about porn sites and dirty movies. This stuff is now available on your TV set at most times of day.
It’s yet another example of how much India is changing.
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