India's 'vulgar' reality TV shows judged too real for viewers

India's 'vulgar' reality TV  shows 

judged too real for viewers

Big Boss, which recently featured Pamela Anderson, and Rakhi's Justice forced into late-night slots by government 

Two of India's popular reality TV shows have been ordered to broadcast in a late-night slot by the government because of their increasingly outrageous content.

The move comes after the hostess of one was sued for causing the suicide of a guest after insulting him over his marriage breakdown. The second – an Indian version of Big Brother – saw Pamela Anderson making a guest appearance in a gold and white sari.

Both programmes have been accused of "vulgar language" and "objectionable scenes" by India's information and broadcasting ministry, which ordered that their mid-evening slots be swapped for 11pm-5am. Such a move would lead to a 30% drop in audiences, analysts say.

The government's decision was not entirely unexpected. India's reality shows range from copies of Masterchef to a version of I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! that saw minor Bollywood starlets spending weeks in a poor rural village experiencing the daily drudgery endured by millions of Indian women.

Many shows offer a shortcut to riches and garner thousands of applicants at auditions in small Indian towns. Some have "constructive" themes, such as a TV competition over which village can be the most environmentally friendly.

Others have been accused of chasing ratings with excesses of sensationalism. Ten days ago, an episode of Rakhi's Justice resulted in presenter Rakhi Sawant, a dancer, model and actor, facing possible prosecution for "abetting suicide" and "intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace". Viewers watched as Sawant, who judges marital disputes on the programme, systematically abused 24-year-old Laxman Prasad Ahirwal, calling him impotent.

Prasad's mother, Savitri Ahirwal, told reporters that her son "was so upset with the indecent remarks that he stopped meeting any outsiders or neighbours … [he] went into acute depression and even stopped eating food ... He gradually became weak and frail and ultimately died".

Sawant and the programme's producers say that "Laxman was suffering from TB and died because of acute pneumonia".

Meanwhile, Anderson has been flown in to boost audiences for the fourth season of Bigg Boss, which has already caused scandals with onscreen relationships and verbal spats between participants.

Chetan Bhagat, India's topselling author who has also participated in reality shows, said the programmes "fascinated" because they broke taboos. "You have sex in Bollywood but this is much more real. It is simply too modern for the traditional India. I get criticised for my books not because they are explicit – they are not – but because I am showing real middle class people doing it. A lot of people are bothered by that," he said.

Sakshi Pradhan, winner of a show called Splitsvilla and a participant in this season's Bigg Boss, described the shift to a later slot as "the right step". She told the Times of India: "These programmes were getting too much for family viewing."

So far Indian news reports about Anderson have proved far from salacious, concentrating largely on how the 43-year-old actor has aged and on the bangles she wore with her sari.