Chandita Mukherjee What do the following Indian TV shows have in common? Boogie woogie on Sony, Star Voice of India on Star TV, Sa-re-ga-ma-pa on Zee TV, Chhote Ustad on Sony and Ek Se Badhkar Ek Chhota Packet, Bada Dhamaka also on Zee TV. If you are not living in a state of vanaprastha, you’d have guessed that these are among the plethora of what are popularly called children’s reality shows. Disguised as talent hunts or song and dance competions they have had children and adults hooked all over the country for the past several years. When Boogie Woogie started at the beginning of the decade, it looked like a fad set to catch on and fade when the novelty wore off, like so many other passing fads. Who would have guessed then that a genre was being born and the satellite channels would not be able to have enough of such programmes? And that there would be no dearth of kids groomed and rehearsed to full copycat standards, ready to appear on the shows? The channels need these kids and the ambitious parents of these children need the channels. The more shows there are, the more children turn up, and the more there are of parent-managers, grooming more kids, vying with each other for TV appearances, a loop that feeds itself endlessly. As much as they may be about the child’s performance, the shows are a vehicle for the parents. While showing off their untiring efforts, they hope to claim at least a moment of fame, if not a launching pad for future glory, fat bank balances and related lifestyle for the entire family, entirely based on little Munnu’s efforts. While at a superficial level, the shows may appear to foster healthy competition between innocent kids, bringing out hidden talents, the kids’ reality programs have come under criticism lately. Speaking at a Kolkata workshop on making amendments to the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986 in July this year, Union Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury outrightly stated that reality shows were violating rights of children, and parents ought to be prevented from sending their children for them. She said, “The other day, I saw a tiny girl suggestively gyrating to a song whose meaning she obviously did not know. What do we say to parents sending their children to such shows?” The immediate cause for provocation was the case of teenaged Shinjini Sengupta who became partially paralyzed, allegedly after a