Cuss-words usage on OTT goes down. Do producers intend to attract a wider audience?

Most people tend to avoid swearing in public. Bharat Misra refrains from using expletives in private— when he is writing a web series. “I don’t remember a situation where I was not asked to reduce the number of cuss words in a script,” says the co-writer of family drama Ghar Waapsi, which released on Disney+ Hotstar last year.

When streaming players came to India in 2016, writers liberally used nudity and profanity in storytelling because there was no regulatory body to stop them. “But now there’s real concern over how content with cuss words will be received by people,” says Misra. In March, the Delhi High Court rebuked content company TVF for the “use of vulgar language” in its teen drama College Romance after someone filed a police complaint against the use of obscene language in Episode 5 of the show’s first season.