The real India - revealed through its reality shows

It is an known fact that the masses love the underdog; the story of the unassuming person who rose above them to become a hero, a figure of adulation. A figure that they can relate to as one among them who rose above to become one of the successful, the privileged. Can this explain the recent happenings in India's #1 reality TV show, Indian Idol? As I sit, I try to think through this phenomenon and decipher the mentality of the millions of my fellow indians who reveal a lot about the way we think as a nation through their simple act of crowning our next croon king.

Does the average Indian hate his fellow citizen who is better than him? Or does he feel the need to prop up the undeserving because the talented will somehow find a way to blaze their trail? Look at some of the evidence that is swarming around us - our horrendously wrong system of reservations which dismissvely shrug aside merit and reward lineage, the importance given to seniority rather than performance in government establishments - do they point to a decaying in our society and a disdain for talent and merit? Aren't these the very reasons that hundreds and thousands of our frustrated talented countrymen have left our country's shores to find success elsewhere?

Perhaps the story of the winning underdog in India's reality TV shows can be attributed to parochialism - a show of chest thumping by the denizens of India's smaller states to show that they too have a powerful voice in India? Is it not a shame that sixty years after freeing ourselves from the Britishm we have been unable to free ourselves from our ourselves?

It is known that contestants drop out of the reckoning if they appear too sexy. Does the abscence of talented girls in the top 3 for the second year running point towards the insecurity in Indian men to accept a smart and successful woman?

An intolerance of talent, parochialism and the Indian MCP - unsettling as it may seem, they do define a large part of India even today - an India different from what I have experienced in its cities. Perhaps, through these shows, we can better understand India - a country of paradoxes, finding it difficult to shed its mindset of the past and handle the changes sweeping through its society.