Eating Spaces, Resisting Creation: A Study of Creation and Consumption of Travel-based Food Shows on Regional and National Television

The dynamics of the market post liberalization of the Indian economy in the 1990s have permeated both, the urban middle class and rural households, setting a trend of negotiation with the ‘exotic foreign’ through an introduction to newly available ingredients, cooking techniques and food items. The foray of the television in the interaction of food cultures (particularly through travel-based food shows) has transformed geographical ‘places’ into virtual ‘spaces’ bringing out questions of ‘reality’, ‘authenticity’ and ‘exoticness’ or ‘mundaneness’. One could propose that the rise of regional television networks in the past decade has created a space for more ‘authentic’ regional and sub-regional representation on television. This paper looks to understand the creation and consumption of travel-based food shows on regional and national television to explore the continuities and changes in cooking and consumption choices of urban and rural audiences. Through a discussion on region and nation, food and identity, and television, space and market economy, the paper makes a case for regional television as a possible resistance to the national.