MOTHER OF ALL REALITY SHOWS

These days you have a reality show for everything. It all started with singing, dancing, racing and dating. Catching the craze (rather cashing on the craze) our desi channels are being flooded with one to many ‘me-toos’ reality show of their American counterparts.

American Idol – Indian Idol
Dancing with the Stars – Jhalak Dikhlaja
Big Brother – Big Boss
Who wants to be a millionaire – KBC
Apprentice – Business Baazigar

The list just goes on… But here is one show that really stands out, it’s probably indigenous, I don’t remember seeing anything of this sorts on the tube so far.
I am talking about Lead India, a times group venture which aims to select a promising young leader. The winner probably gets to contest for loksabha, I still don’t know if the winner would qualify for a ticket with a major political party or times group would assist his candidature as an independent.

A reality show of this kind will nevertheless make interesting viewing. With high octane drama, heated discussion and debate it can make for a good viewing. For all its good will and intent TV shows are all about entertaining viewers. Would you imagine prime Manmohan Singhji emerge as a leader out of one of the TV shows. I doubt it. It would not be in the interest of the media company to put a visionary and still make money of it.

Its drama which sells…I have seen mediocre candidates qualify for the finale riding on popularity wave alone.You cant sometimes eliminate candidate who are public favorites. Sanjaya in America Idol is a classic case.

At the end of the day the media company has to make money. And you need people who can entertain, people who can create drama, people who can be nasty. The show itself would be clichéd if these ingredients are missing. In whose interest would the media company want to generate a leader? Besides with the sms ratings the results would be skewed with regionalism overtaking credentials. Given these circumstance I would have serious reservations on the kind leader emerging out of the show and the impact he would have on the society at large.If the show aims to realistically pull out a leader of this exercise it can only culminate as faux pas.

Not for a second I doubt the credentials of any of the contestants. They are individuals who have done extremely well in their fields; however to take center stage of Indian politics you need to have a different set of skills altogether. In India politics are feed through grass roots or political lineage. Anyway the show is off air this weekend it would be interesting to see how it fares.

On a passing note, I wish if some one can come up with parallel shows for ‘Simple Life’ – Paris and Nicole being replaced with Rakhi Sawant and Mallika Sherawat. Even better would be a desi version of ‘Flavor of Love’.