ABSTRACT
This chapter examines emergent trends in lifestyle culture in contemporary India by focusing on a popular sub-genre of lifestyle television, namely food shows. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, television was state-supported with minimal program diversity, the deregulation of the industry and the rise of satellite have seen as explosion in the number and variety of channels available. Indian television has transformed from a rather narrow and exclusionary model of 'nationalized' state television to become, today, one of the largest and most diverse television industries in the world. One of the main spaces where lifestyle programming and associated forms of expertise have proliferated on Indian TV is on dedicated lifestyle cable channels aimed at aspirational middle- and upper middle-class audiences. The multilingual channel options on DTH also enable Ramesh and his family to watch foreign popular documentaries, and reality and lifestyle shows on channels such as Discovery and Fox.
