Nothing beyond obvious. Kartiki wins the Saregamapa Little Champs and I never had doubt that she wont. This is democracy guys. My congratulations to Kartiki. She is a good singer and has great potential. This win will help her reach excellence. I had given some words of advise earlier and I am sure they have not gone well with some fans. Some people have also replied I don’t understand music and so on. One of the harsh realities of life are coming out with this competition. I was moved by the purity of heart shown by these children and may God keep their hearts as pure as they are. That said still one has to be assertive in life and make judgments and give opinions. As much as we must respect the opinions of the people who made Kartiki win, I believe the opposite opinions should also get respect and the fair comments should be accepted without bias to go forward in life.
The old battle of casts seems to be engulfing us over the internet as well. As soon as the contest is over and news papers are making their pages open for comments, some real nasty comments are visible on the net already. See this link on eSakal giving news of Kartiki’s win. Some people have gone ahead and said that the losers (Is that the right word? No. Runner ups) did not get the trophy because of their surnames and the others have replied in the spirit of तुमचं ते प्रेम आणि आमचं ते लफडं? Now this kind of discussion is not going to lead us anywhere. It is going to bring back the issue of reservation back on the discussion boards of internet and it’s going to turn really ugly fight.
See the system we have here and the kind of arguments we hear. If you are from so called upper class and give comment about someone who is a little less performer but from so called lower class, then you are criticizing just because he/she is from lower cast. If you are from SCUC (so called upper class) and you promote the good performer from SCUC, you are still racists. There is a deductive conclusion drawn here.When you praise SCUC performer, the SCLC performer is bad hence you are racist. Now if you are from SCUC and you praise someone from SCLC, then the SCUC people think this guy is paid to promote. Where the fact could be both – you are trying to promote the candidate and say some good words to encourage OR you are really paid (not directly always… but may be instructed to do so by those who pay you) In today’s world most of the minds pick up the negative option. So whichever way you go you are killed.
Fortunately Zee Marathi has one advantage. The judges in Marathi give detailed comments compared to its Hindi counterpart. Also they don’t give 100% marks to everyone every time. They do grade the performers. My request would be to consider the total marks of each candidate in this show. Whatever anyone may call me, I still believe, Arya is best because of her versatility and Prathamesh second because he is reaching for excellence in his chosen path and has got best scores so far. I would rate Kartiki as third on merit. She definitely has great voice quality. It is clean and her throw is very powerful and the rustic feel is suitable for the songs she likes, but one must remember she was thrown out of the competition once because of poor marks as well as SMSes. The call back episode did the magic for her. Luck by chance? I am clearing all my doubts about Zee Marathi’s intention purely because of the fact that they announced equal scholarship for all these top five candidates.
That said the system for final results was itself faulty. Come what may it was going to chose the popular candidate. Correction… the candidate with most SMSes/ votes. That is the reason why I said it was predictable result. I tried my level best to promote the candidate who was not strong in that area at all. Arya always had some of the lowest scores in SMS/ votes. Consider this… All the judges were going to give marks to the champs out of say 100. So Arya’s gain did not mean anyone else’s loss. So when you compare the marks, the band in which these five champs would have fallen was going to be narrow in any case. Whereas in the vote side, someone’s gain is other candidate’s loss. This is because it is based on the fact that the pie is limited. Total size of the pie was always going to be 100% and it was going to be eaten completely. So every vote popular candidate got made others go down faster. Now you know how India votes. Don’t you. Most of the SCUC people will vote few times at the most and they will feel that this is fair enough. How much you can bend your principles? (I am not claiming that these are the only people with principles. That would be deductive conclusion.) Where as the fans of popular candidates use the system and express their emotions full heartedly. For them it is love for their own people. This is what majority of the India is. So the results are not shocking at all. I was shocked only once. Not this time.
Coming back to the ugly discussion on the cast of the champs, the entire system in India is not a self correcting system. It is by default a self degrading system if not maintaining status quo. Just a few days back the leader of a cast group demanding reservations for them was saying that the people of his cast were landlords and rich earlier but now they have gone down from that state and hence need reservation. What an argument. The system which you have is bringing you down and still you want to find a solution within the same system? I had written about this sometime back and I am giving link to that article here. My short solution is that from now on do not ask anyone his cast and abolish the entire reservation system immediately. All deserving candidates must be given scholarships based on their economic situation and not on their cast. Jobs should go only to the merit where skill is required for low or unskilled jobs once again lower income people should be given preference.
If there is no record of your cast, you don’t have it. Let a person choose his last name whatever he likes. One thing is sure that within few years there is no alternative to merit. If we manage to abolish the cast system or in any case when this system continues, in few years India will see 97% reservation, the competition will be worse than today and only merit will win. Till date no where in the world a system has emerged which is purely based on merit. So I know it is a mirage but then who stops you from dreaming. The world around me is getting better than tomorrow but I need to keep up hope that in India somewhere something positive is happening. I hope again that Kartiki’s of this world are not surrounded by the “Contractor” kind of characters portrayed by Atul Parchure. She strives for excellence in whatever she does. Maharashtra will get a great singer for folk, semi classical, devotional and gazal music. I also hope that the others do not get frustrated by this result. Kartiki is their friend and she did not consider her to be separate from them. She did not send all those SMSes to separate her from others and all of them strive for excellence and nothing less in their career. All the best to all of them. I don’t want anyone of them to be the lost talent of reality.