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Parents to blame for Shaktimaan 'suicides'

Suhasini Haider in New Delhi

Parents who do not discuss what programmes their children may be watching with their kids are the main culprits when incidents like the Shaktimaan 'suicides' take place, according to a report released by the Centre for Media Studies today.

The report, which was based on the Round Table Seminar on Children and Television organised in November 1998 by the CMS, details many guidelines for both parents as well as television producers on the subject of television viewing.

"Unfortunately, in India," says P N Vasanti, convener of the Round Table, "technology has overtaken family ties. Television is now such an intricate part of our daily lives and seems so real. Parents are yet to realise the impact that television has on their children. Unless they sit and talk about what their kids have seen on television, they won't know how real their children may think a character like Shaktimaan is."

Shaktimaan, a very popular superhero character on Doordarshan, will be taken off air at the end of March by the authorities after reports that it allegedly 'inspired' several children to attempt suicide in the hope the superhero would rescue them.

"What is frightening," says Reena Arora, a concerned mother of two children in Delhi, "is this is the impact of a programme produced especially for children. Most of the programmes our children get to see these days are really meant for adults, and I shudder to think of what the effect of those could be."

The CMS report reveals that less than 5 per cent of the programmes available to urban children in India today have been actually made for children. This, says the report, leads children to watch other programmes such as horror shows, sexually explicit movies, and excessively violent television shows. For example, according to CMS, more than 19 per cent of the viewers of the Zee Horror Show are children in the 8 to 14 age-group. According to the report, "Parents and teachers feel that as a result of watching television, children have started using abusive language and had become aggressive and violent."

The experts at CMS are quick to point out, however, that the producers of the unsuitable programmes and the management of the television channels that show them are only partially to blame.

The report concluded it is the parents who should take responsibility for inculcating 'discriminative viewing' in their children. "Parents must share television time with their children, " says psychologist Alok Sarin, who agrees with this recommendation of the CMS report, "If you can sit down with your kids and sift the 'reel' from the real, then they can make up their own minds about how seriously to take what they are watching. That is why cartoons are normally considered so harmless. It is less easy for a child to identify himself or herself with a cartoon character."

The report also contains a draft of a 'national policy' it feels the government must enforce, and legislation which would ensure that television channels abide by government guidelines on this matter.

A team from CMS including P N Vasanti, and child-labour activist Swami Agnivesh will visit heads of television networks, schools, and television production companies with the findings of their report and advising them of steps to ensure children are not adversely affected by the television programmes they see.

Among their recommendations to parents are:

1. Restrict television viewing to 1 to 2 hours each day (inclusive of videos and games).

2. Turn off television during mealtime and playtime, before school and during homework time.

3. Pre-select programmes your children can watch after pre-screening them.

4. Keep television sets out of kids' rooms.

5. Watch adult programming and news when kids are not around.

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