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.

Open Feedback on SRGMP to ZEE Marathi, Avadhut and Vaishali: Part 5

The saying is "one rotten mango spoils the whole basket". When there is a basket full of rotten TV channels, I wonder what could happen.... On typical Indian streets, every corner becomes a garbage dumping ground, and the by-passers have to smell those when they pass-by each corner. The viewers get the same treatment on the television channels as they switch the remote.

The last fort to fall to these rotten channels was the Marathi SRGMP Li'l Champs. In the 14th episode of finals, the ZEE once again changed the rules to keep the telecom companies happy. They created another drama like their Hindi versions, and retained 5 participants for the mega-final. Nothing wrong in doing so.....but! Then why did not they think of it when other finalists were eliminated? Shamika and Shalmali were better than some contestants left in the show. As usual, they cooked up drama like any other saans-bahu soap.

Initially the ZEE had put a nice PDF of rule for this program, and one-by-one manipulated all of those for their own benefits. They added "+" and "-" to the scoring scale from 1 to 7 (S to N), later used higher octave for marking....while they were supposed to maintain a ratio of % SMS and the marks. You never know if they had scaled the SMS weightage to the highest marks given. In fact, higher octave itself is a manipulation in the competition. They changed the recall rules and now the mega-finals rule. Fortunately I followed this program only on Youtube, but I really pity those who watch it on TV. Lack of transparency, partial judgments, and SMS based discrepancies have marred this show.

However, remember that the garbage is created by the the same people who smell it.

Bangalore, An orphan city on its path towards ruins

Hello and Happy New Year!
Today I was coming back from Majestic to my place (this is my infrequent route these days) and saw yet another horrible site of tree destruction done by this government. Same story on the road near National College, and many other parts (Mecri circle to Hebbal, Old Madras road) of the city. I wonder why no one has spoken against it - expect there was some news on NDTV, there isn't any media craze for this topic. I was especially surprised to see the even the core area of "original" Bangalore population such as Basavangudi was silent on this.

Bangalore was/is a green city; hence it never saw a movement like "Green Pune/Mumbai/other cities". A green city which is full of population, which has hardly any loyalty towards it, is surely going towards a grim disaster. Demographically those who claim on the city are either gone to other countries, or "high and pub goer class" or rowdies, and none of them would be sensitive to this issue (for that matter any socio-cultural issue). High class does not have intellectuals (or they are busy getting academy awards for their novels). And the rest of the population (I call these as educated, but intellectually illiterate class) has a dream that one fine day they would go back to their home-town. This population has enough money that even if you construct the bullet train as a public transportation, they would continue to use their cars. In nutshell, historically a very few state/regions in India have socio-culturally aware and active people, and Bangalore does not find a place in that list - there are no Mohan Dhariyas in Bangalore. Also, while on one hand BJP talks about nature conservation as of on the reasons for preserving Ram-setu, here, like many other original agendas from their manifesto, they have forgotten the nature. Probably cutting tree, widening roads, constructing metro and contracts for each of these are their only earning sources.

Of course the question would come back to me that what I am doing apart from writing this blog and I do not have any answer. I checked with some organizations (Janaagraha, etc.) who are simply not interested because this does not give them enough political mileage. I checked with my employer, which takes up a lot of so called "social causes", and rightly they don't want to risk their relations with the government. I think it was "chipko" movement in which people just embraced each tree to save forests and I am ready for that, I am ready for hunger strikes, rallies, etc., but movement like that need support from "the (ab) originals".

May be after 10 years, someone would start a "Green Bengaluru" movement and get a Magsese award for that - what an idea "Saar"ji....Keep quiet while creating a problem and then solve it, bag an award and publicity!

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.