It’s more than 100 episodes old now. But within a few days of being launched, Balika Vadhu, a daily serial on Colors channel, zoomed to the top of the TRP charts. That was a bit surprising, since Balika Vadhu comes loaded — not with sensational kitchen intrigues — but with an edifying social message on the evils of child marriage.

The serial is about a little girl, Anandi, who gets married into a house ruled by the orthodox iron-fisted matriarch Dadisa (brilliantly played by veteran Surekha Sikri), who allows no rebellion. So in a sense it is a saas bahu tale with a twist — Dadisa is a mother-in -law from hell — and it’s what audiences are lapping up.

Balika Vadhu’s launch was low key but it took third spot in the serial stakes from day one and then quickly ascended to the top spot, with regular television ratings points of 7.8. The longest running soap on Indian TV, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, which had double-digit TRPs at its zenith, had sunk to a rating of 3.6 recently. Which is why STAR TV axed the soap before the end of its contractual period.

Colors’ commissioning head Ashwini Yardi was convinced that a social awareness programme with a rural setting would knock the socks off the viewer. Her hunch paid off. It was Yardi too who suggested the introduction of Gehna, a young girl married to a man old enough to be her father after his first wife, a child bride, dies at child birth. Gehna questions Dadisa’s authority with unflinching resolve, which Anandi is too small to do.

Yardi says the intention was to convey a message without being ‘preachy’ and while being entertaining. The story had to evolve in a manner that reeled in viewers. “It is easy to be different but the audiences have to accept the difference,” says Yardi.

But good intentions can also be dangerous. Some feel that a good start is being squandered in a softening stance against child marriage, sending out mixed messages to the audience. In fact, gushing posts on the Internet seem to talk more about the cuteness of young Avika Gor, who plays Anandi, than about the horror of child marriage.

Shakun of Vimochana, a Bangalore-based non governmental organisation that works in the field of women’s rights, feels that the serial is definitely better than other saas-bahu sagas, but the makers seem to be sugar coating the message. “It’s not very clear if they want to give a message or just say the practice is bad. It started strongly but now the intentions are very fuzzy. Maybe they are scared of the backlash. We all know what happened to Bhanwari Devi,” she says, referring to the community worker who was gang raped in Rajasthan for fighting child marriage.

A harsher critic is Subhash Mohapatra of the Forum for Fact-Finding Documentation and Advocacy (FFDA), a body that works against illiteracy and child marriage. It was partly due to Mohapatra’s nationwide campaign that the centre enacted the Prevention of Child Marriage Act in 2006. “They are glorifying child marriage,” he fumes. “I feel very frustrated. The electronic media have no ethics. Do you know that in Kawardha village in Chattishgarh there are no women over 30 because they all die owing to early child bearing. Serials like Balika Vadhu commercialise the practice so much that the message has been lost.”

Komal Srivastava is more forgiving. Founder of the Jaipur chapter of the Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti, which takes up literacy and women’s issues, Srivastava has tuned in to the serial a few times. “At least they are talking about child marriage. But it is not very realistic — child marriages usually happen in poor families. Even gauna (the married girl finally going to the husband’s home after a period of staying in her father’s house) usually happens after puberty. But in the serial it happens much earlier. So there are these contradictions, but at least the serial is creating an awareness,” says Srivastava.

Of course, Balika Vadhu’s success is also rooted in happy timing. With its clear social message, Balika Vadhu arrived at a time when viewers were weary of soaps populated by characters that snarled and blinked their way through improbable storylines.Yet it is not as if serials with social messages are new to Indian television. Doordarshan has had a long innings in it, and in the 1980s serials such as Humlog had venerable actor Ashok Kumar deliver a homily at the end of each episode.

Evidently, like Hum Log, Balika Vadhu too has touched a chord somewhere. Yardi points to TRPs zooming “every time Gehna questions Dadisa on tradition.”

“I know it is being said that we are being soft but that isn’t so,” says Balika Vadhu writer Purnendu Shekhar, who wrote the story for a film 12 years ago but found no takers on the big or the small screen. But in Balika Vadhu, the conflict is ideological and conveyed through emotions and characters rather than incidents, he says. “At some point we will also show the prevention of a child marriage,” he adds.

The lasting ill effects of early marriage such as loss of childhood, sexual mismatch, early motherhood and lack of education will be shown, says Shekhar. “Something bad will happen to Anandi when she grows up. Viewers will feel, ‘oh s***. We did not realise this is the fallout.’ I am now writing the episodes related to Anandi’s puberty that will air in February,” he says.

Shekhar, who hails from Jaipur, has seen the terrible consequences of young girls being forced to bear children. He acknowledges that there were some angry reactions to the serial in Rajasthan, a state that tops child marriage figures in the country. “But not to point out the shortcomings of a friend is a betrayal of friendship,” Shekhar shrugs.

What if the channel interferes or there is a backlash and one has to tone the content down? The writer says, “I wrote on the condition that I would have a free hand. If ever there is a situation where I feel I would have to make a compromise, I will walk away from the serial.”

But Balika Vadhu’s audiences are certainly not walking away. Right now, all they are doing is tuning in to watch the serial in ever greater numbers.