This TV show watched by 400 mn helped change gender beliefs in rural India

What marked this soap apart was its use of education-entertainment, or 'edutainment', to talk about women's reproductive health and gender rights

In Pratapgarh, a village that could be anywhere in the Hindi belt, a young man, Ravi, gets to know that his wife, Seema, is pregnant with a girl child, third time in a row. He wants her to get an abortion because he wants a male child. He forces Seema to accompany him to a doctor who agrees to conduct the abortion though the foetus is past the 20-week deadline for a medical termination of pregnancy. Seema undergoes the abortion but is critical, having lost a lot of blood. She is rescued by her sister