Open Feedback on SRGMP to ZEE Marathi, Avadhut and Vaishali: Part 4

Only reason why Avanti, kartiki, and Rohit are getting more SMS is regional and religious. In one case it is Marathwada region voting for Rohit and on the other hand (remember previous edition in which someone from Nagpur was elected because of flood of votes from Vidarbha), the Gujju class (BTW, is she a Gujju) would be voting for Avanti. Many times while listening to Kartiki, it seems she is eating something while singing. Avadhut called it as a Ghazal style!
Rests of the viewers are from the elite Marathi class (such as Punekars, etc.) people, who would keep their strong opinions, write articles, and would not vote. Any case, the issue is the SMS based "election" system in which only telecom cos. make profit.

As I wrote earlier, singing Hindi songs in this Marathi programs is unfairness at its best. Rohit was already a participant in the Hindi version of program and gets undue advantage. Recent episode in which Shreya Ghoshal was the judge, he was give more than 2 mins. to sing as compared to others who were typically singing 1 min. 30 sec. Clearly more than a competition goes behind in the background.

Another problem with all reality shows is to project some personal problems of the contestants to cash in the sympathy, to create some drama. I do not care if you, you family members are not well or any such reason in a competition. Another stupidity is showing/making an underdog a winner. A contestant re-enters through call-backs and then become at least the finalist and the anchors keep on bragging them. May be there is hard work of such people, but mostly it is a marketing gimmick.

As some other blogger mentioned, I can not rule out the bias against participants from a particular class. I do not want to define that class (social, political, minority, etc.), but the standards applied against each of these participants look different.

Open Feedback on SRGMP to ZEE Marathi, Avadhut and Vaishali: Part 3

-----Original Message-----
From: Saraf, Ravindra P
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 2:24 AM
To: 'zeemarathi@zeenetwork.com'; 'avg@avadhootgupte.com'Cc: 'artikuhikar@gmail.com'Subject:
RE: Feedback on Marathi SRGMP

Hi,
We have this lengthy mail chain, of course from my side. I hope eventually I would send a copy to all little champs and post it on the net.

People continued our tradition and we got Shamika Bhide out. Congratulations to them! When Mumbai was burning I think people from Latur and (may be Gujarat) were busy sending SMS for Rohit Raut and Avanti Patel.

Callback was more fun! I am still not able to read between the lines from what you did in the episode.
- did you try to fill in the time of 1.5 hours?
- did you promote all 3 to get better signers?
- did the other participants who did not participate in the call-back realize the uselessness of this competition?

Deo Saheb mentioned they had to give an account of every min on AIR. Here there is not such restriction. Where media and entertainment industry has already given up their responsibilities, how can one expect Zee and judges to be answerable to anyone? So even RTI would not help here. There are many unfortunate things that every generation witnesses helplessly...Democratization of talent on this show is one of such unfortunate things.

Open Feedback on SRGMP to ZEE Marathi, Avadhut and Vaishali: Part 2

With due regards to Shankar Mahadevan, we should avoid judges which try to bring in the horrible and stupid culture from Hindi TV industry to Marathi programs. Not sure why the contestants were asked to sing Hindi song. Not that those are not melodious ones, but why Hindi? Only for Mahadevan? If a contestant is not comfortable (Remember Mugdha said she does not understand English) Hindi songs, he/she would be at loss. Let me remind this is a Marathi competition. (As Shirish Kanekar says that it is a research topic why Marathi girl marry Panjabi and Muslims). God know if they would come to Aika Dajiba in future, but at least now, please don't spoil them. It was an episode in which you wanted to be just neutral judges by averaging the scores. That essentially gives power to all stupid SMS to decide who rules!!! Given your background, you should read the quality of a judge from Sanskrit. I agree children sang very well on this day. But your scores have role to play in eliminations. That could have saved someone like Shalmali to eliminate. You have seen these children for so many weeks, you are better than SMS counts. You should play your role, adhere to your duty!

Hindu or Open Category

Remaining or uniting only as Hindus is not sufficient in the current world – and this is a sheer fall out of “divide and rule” principle. I would not again blame British folks for sowing those seeds, those always existed and only beneficiaries have changed over the time. Now we have to identify ourselves and others in terms of new caste categories according to Govt. of India. There would be always an aspiration to move towards the privileged class. In olden days, it was towards Brahmins and nowadays it is towards any reserved class. That’s why we are seeing appeasements like amendments in the OBC category and Gujjar agitations. That’s why sensor board removed Budhha from the film Dashavatara. Keeping it brief - the need is to unite under an umbrella of Open category than Hindu. After all we unite together only for some selfish reasons – we need to fight for our rights and become a vote bank. While education has taught how to write to the under-privileged class, the culture what we are talking as “Hindus together” is too difficult thought for these folks to digest and it would takes not just years, but lives of many people before such an umbrella could be established.

Do we really want NRIs to come back?

This was a my reply to a Marathi online newspaper (http://www.esakal.com/) which asked for opinons and thoughts of Indians in US/other countries wanting to return back.

Hello,
I am from Bangalore, hence not quite eligible for the NRI topic which esakal has started. I am also very sure that esakal would not print my opinions (mostly esakal would be afraid to do so). The questions is why so much pampering of those who went out of India. Sorry, I do not have any sympathy for them. Here are some important issues on this topic (based on those my experience with those who had come back to India as my colleagues).

1. Indians always has some attraction for the white skin and probably that percolates in favor of even those who went their. Remember that it was their choice and not any compulsion from the Govt. of India.

2. “You have to be in the system for changing the system”: Those who go out do not have any noble interest than their self. Hence their sentimental thoughts are futile on ground reality. Mostly they come to India to “try out” and end up playing with the Indian system disturbing socio-economical balance. They always have safe bet of returning back.

3. Some might claim their investment power, scientific contributions, etc. Though the media has publicized Amartya Sen, Kalpana Chawla, Sunita Williams, etc., the person to honor is our prime-minister, who is from the same school as that of Amartya Sen but stayed back. Chinese and Taiwan nations could be another example who really took back the technology from US to their countries. The reserve brain drain is not becuase of love for country, but because of lack of opportunities.

4. Socio-economical balance: These retuning NRIs end up becoming a rich class in Indian society thus adding to the woes of the poor and the middle-class. Some of them come back to add discipline and values to their spoiled children – but finally these spoiled brats follow the story of one rotten mango. Given that their parents are rich these children take up all good schools. Same story repeats in the rest of the part of life in which their riches help them to take up all resources. Based on my office experience, the reason for some of the people to return was the property in California was too costly for their investments. Hence their target market is India. And then who is suffering? All residential Indians!

5. Every returning NRI adds to the inflation in India. : No explanation required.

In my opinions, these retuning Indian should be so heavily taxed that they would not dare to come back and if they still dare, they would be averaged out. It is better for them and us as well to stay wherever they are.

Finally: As Mr. P Sainath, the Magsaysay award winner journalist say, there is a lot better and responsible journalism which can be done. Esakal can concentrate on true journalism.