India With Sanjeev Bhaskar

Monday evening saw the beginning of India-Pakistan 07 on BBC2 with India With Sanjeev Bhaskar. One of the reasons I love BBC is their plethora of programmes about India, which are invaribaly good. I find the programs present India in ways that are unfamiliar to me, all the while showing it as itself, complete with all the contradictions that it is.
This program though mostly misses the mark. Some of the show was great. The tour thorugh the recycling industry in Bombay was eye-opening. The bit about the beauty contest for married women was uncomfortably funny. The firm producing India comic books in bangalore was fascinating (I'm not into comic books, if that's what you're wondering)
What struck me as strange about the show was that I had been to all the places that the first program visited and none of them looked anything like the places I had visited. It wasn't that the a new side of the cities were shown but the cities seemed white-washed, sanitized. They were places safe for Sanjeev Bhaskar's cooling glasses (sunglasses for those of you unfamiliar with late 70's indian-english slang)
Cochin among the most beautiful places on earth? Come on. I can name a few place in India that are up there (Jaisalmer, Dal Lake, other parts of Kerala) but the megapolis that is Cochin hardly qualifies. He's taken the India that's in the media and re-hashed it together to tell you what you want to hear.
I would've loved to have seen more of the India that isn't portrayed in the media (which, let me say again, they do a bit of and do quite well) The campus of Infosys gives me no more insight into India that going to campus of Cisco in San Jose (where there are as many indians working) Watching a taping of Eastenders on acid is no more enlightening either (unless they were actually on acid. That, I may have found interesting)
I hope the second episode is less hollywoody and more real.