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India:
Television Fails to Address the Concerns of the Elderly
Indiantelevision.com
June 25, 2003
India - While television serials abound with grey-haired Baas and
Babujis, these characters fail to address the concerns of the nation's
elderly, according to a study by New Delhi-based media research
organisation Centre for Advocacy and Research. While senior citizens find
representation on television, they don't identify with the programmes, the
study said.
Commissioned by the Union ministry of social justice and empowerment, the
study was conducted in five cities and monitoring the viewing habits of 75
senior citizens in each place. "Our interaction with viewers clearly
indicates that television has become a lifeline for the elderly,"
said Akhila Sivadas, the centre's executive director. "Watching
television is a favourite past-time of all the respondents. Elderly people
depend on television for entertainment, information and, critically, for
companionship." Senior citizens watch an average of two hours to six
hours of television a day, the survey found. The large majority also spent
two hours to four hours reading. In fact, many people felt that children
watched more television because their grandparents refused to switch off
the set.
Aging people increasingly are being left alone, prompting them to seek
refuge in their TV sets, Ms Sivadas reasoned. But TV programmes rarely
present solutions for how the elderly could cope with this loneliness and
the problems they face, she said.
The study also notes that while the popularity of soaps featuring joint
families means that there are more elderly characters in television
serials, the portrayal of senior citizens is rarely realistic. "The
aged are portrayed as people keeping pace with time, which is not always
the case," Ms Sivadas said. "Positive portrayals, though
welcome, ignore the reality." The study showed that such problems as
failing health and inter-generationalproblems are never addressed.
Defending the television industry, Rajesh Pavithran of Balaji Telefilms
explained that programmes do not concentrate on issues that concern the
elderly because television is a medium of general entertainment.
M. Suku, the national director of WPP marketing communications, added that
70 per cent of Indians are younger than 34 and television programmes
reflect this. In addition, the elderly are marginalised because they do
not have purchasing power.
The US has 75 million people older than 60 who are considered a huge
target for consumer goods, said Sheilu Sreenivasan of Dignity Foundation.
"But, it is not so here," she said.
Nevertheless, there
is a need for "meaningful, intellectual dialogue on their
problems", said Ms Sreenivasan.
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