Reality Shows - Finding Some Unity In Diversity

As Reality Shows Become Popular Again, We See Them Trying To Find Some Unity In Diversity

- Prathyush Parasuraman

Reality shows, if seen through a generous, unironic eye, are petri dishes of the things that make up our nation. A microcosmic exaggeration of who we are. An insistence on “diversity” gets built into the narrative, whose increasing popularity streaming platforms are lapping up—Big Boss (2006—) on Disney+ Hotstar, Shark Tank India (2021—) on SonyLIV, Lock Upp (2022—) on ALTBalaji and MX Player, Dance India Dance (2009—) on Zee5.

Was it a coincidence, then, that the first two contestants of the recently released Shark Tank India—a reality show where budding entrepreneurs make business pitches to a panel of five investors or ‘sharks’— came from two opposite ends of the country: Bhavnagar in Gujarat and Darjeeling in West Bengal? Guided by the belief that the post-liberalised Indian landscape is united by an entrepreneurial spirit, the show seems to suggest that a product can be local but the customer is always floating in a “glocalised” ether. Everything, from potato chips to Indori poha, Kerala banana chips, Kunafa and, of course, Maggi, is being sold in Aizawl, Shillong, Pathankot and Nellore. (That Shark Tank India takes place entirely in Hindi also shows the limitation of this tapestried project.)

But sometimes, like in Lock Upp, a more brutal cousin of Big Boss where controversial contestants are locked up in a jail-like set for 10 weeks, it is not the geographic diversity as much as the spectrum of political persuasions that is used to convey this stitched portrait—the comedian Munawar Faruqui’s