Devil’s Advocate: Shark Tank India 2.0 might be too sugary for its own good

You can tell a reality TV show is popular when it pushes blinding rhetoric out of people’s envelopes onto social media, with the intent to signal virtue rather than vitriol. Linkedin, that gallingly superficial social media platform, is full of opinion posts about the latest season of Shark Tank India. It’s easy to see why the show is a winner, but in its second season now, it has also worryingly started to resemble the worst bits of TV reality shows, we assumed it would be a detour from. There is far too much sugar and congeniality on offer in a show that has now realised, it must milk the moment, to become popular rather than important. This is after all, tv and streaming, where the actual numbers that matter come from the viewers. The second season, as one Shark has already said on record is sans the ‘toxicity’. Ashneer Grover ’s inglorious exit from both his business and the tank, you could argue, has only helped the show gain eyeballs. There have even been instances of petty quibbles between the Sharks and/or their relatives online, that only attest to the adage that ‘any publicity is good publicity’. But Grover’s absence also exposes a lack of bite, in a show that has now become a stream of grease, with palms flowing in and out of it, with discomforting regularity. Possibly the most revealing moment in the first week of the show’s return has also been the one that has become the most spoken about. The founder of a sustainable shoe brand, that I will not name, walked in and bared what many people on Linkedin will tell you, was his ‘soul’. On the brink of collapse, the founder of this unique shoe brand, broke down on national television, as was maybe expected, or the want of a public that likes its fair share of sentimentality. And while this pitch offered the emotion and the guilt of watching a grown man partly crumble on national television, it also took you back to the days when reality TV (on TV) was just this - a manipulative yarn of suffering and strife.

We have all seen dance and singing shows that mine a contestant’s lack of privilege for the emotional core that reality tv, on accord of its superficiality, strains to create. Struggle and suffering are popular ingredients that ensure a certain population of this country tunes in. There is something inarguably Indian about the way we persistently package pain. Firstly, because there is so much to go around. And second, because it’s probably the only way to draw focus away from your own. To which effect, Shark Tank India now risks becoming just another show that happens to be about high-intellect ideas but wants to service the same appetite for low-brow theatrics. This one pitch, in principle, is symbolic of that malaise. For one thing, a company on the brink of collapse, was always unlikely to draw a deal out of the Sharks unless it translated to charity. Jugaadu Kamlesh’s watershed moment from the first season represented the flight of fancy. This here, instead, echoed cynical placement. A founder on the brink, a category unlikely to win and the possibility of a deal a near impossibility, this pitch, if you dissect it objectively, screams scripted tenderness rather than blunt realisation. Obviously, the pitch itself wasn’t scripted but the fact that a company dead in the ditch was allowed the opportunity to pitch rather than something younger, promising or on the up, is clue to the kind of narrative structuring the show has veered towards. It now knows how to create viral moments, which might also be the undoing of its spiritual purpose. Another aspect that the show, the judges along with it, fail to often acknowledge is providence. There is plenty of pretend-genius to throw around, alongside chest-beating over hard work, labour and belief, but there his rarely an acknowledgment of privilege or luck. Making successful businesses is much more than just entrepreneurial gut and grit. It also has to do with lucking out on things that you cannot foresee. It’s a part of the business journey that not many self-assigned masters of the craft want to acknowledge or own up to. Shark Tank India is of course still as entertaining, despite the missing acerbic honesty of Grover. And while it’s a lot more jovial and lightheaded, unfortunately, it also wants to import the template of the reality television, rife with awkward but effective creative choices and cynical manipulation of the audience’s vantage point, to extract that which could have instead for the sake of posterity have been avoided. But then again, would it then be as popular, even if vacuous? Probably not. Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .