ZEE Marathi - SRGMP Lil Champs: Khoda Pahad Nikalaa Chuhaa!

I do not have a TV set at my home and mostly followed the Zee Marathi SRGMP Lil Champs on the youtube. With all inaccuracies and biases discussed vehemently on the blogs, when the SRGMP Lil Champs declared the mega final last Sunday, I was excited to watch it on the TV and since on Sundays usually I am busy with my own practice, I had to change my schedule (I know you would say "big deal"), called up a couple of friends to check if anyone could allow me watching this event at their homes. And then ....Khoda Pahad Nikalaa Chuhaa!

I have some kind of jinx with the TV - Whenever I desperately want to watch a program, the quality of episode that day is well below average. In Diwali vacations, I was eager to watch this same show at my hometown and they organized a Diwali special - par low quality episode in the SRGMP history. Hence, the first disappointment of this live mega final came, when I saw the champs are repeating the songs. That essentially means the jury is fake and impotent for the judgment. And thus the decision of the winner is based on SMS based democracy.

Now I have talked about this democracy many times in my blogs. If I look back, the term I liked most form my own blogs was "democratization of intellectualism". That essentially explained the result, which was obviously pre-decided by the ZEE. In previous decade, there was a fashion amongst the upper caste girls to marry lower caste grooms. Here is the trend is on the similar line - to paint everything in the caste equation. A winner of the surname "Ambekar", "Laghate", "Vaishampayan" or if we look back the previous version, where it was "Panse" or "Joshi" is not acceptable, whereas one of "Raut", "Gaikwad, "Made" fits into the socio-political equation.
Obviously a list of 5 megafinalist with "Bhide", "Sukhatankar", "Ambekar", "Laghate", and "Vaishampayan" would not have worked for this system. What the people want to see or face is NOT the fair merit based competition in any walk of life - they want "slum dog millionaires" - that too by reservation. If we look at it symbolically, the call-back was the reservation and the declaration of Kartiki as the winner was "slum dog millionaire" giri.

What we need to realize is the fact that if you are not as good as Arya, Prathamesh or Mugdha in your respective fields, the system would systematically eliminate you. I hope they would not take this result seriously and continue the progress in their musical and professional careers. Hopefully they would get at least few opportunities where they would face a fair merit based well-judged competition.