SIGHT & SOUND
All that song and dance
Amita Malik

For some time now, I have been watching with fascination as well as scepticism, competitions on various channels for singers and dancers. The contestants, and this is the good thing about these contests, are unknown people from remote corners of the country who come to a metropolitan city to compete. And, some of the winners have been from surprising places like Srinagar in J&K and Silchar in Assam. The awards are given not just by an expert jury but are combined with a popular vote. The judges are usually from the Mumbai film industry and most of the contestants speak in Hindi and sing in Hindi. I hope the South Indian, Bengali and other non-Hindi channels also run such contests, otherwise it would be very unfair for non-Hindi speaking and singing people.

The ultimate presentation in front of the judges (there are lakhs of entries) is held in the presence of an invited audience as well as relatives and friends of the contestants. The camera frequently pans over to the anxious as well as proud mamas, papas and teachers of the singers or dancers. There is a lot of gurugiri, if I may coin a term, with the contestants touching the feet of the judges, who tend to be stern and cruel and make humiliating comments about those who do not fare well and frequently reduce them to tears. There is no question of challenging or asking for clarification about the judgements. But sometimes the outside votes can add a controversial note, as happened recently. If a contestant from Assam won largely because voters in his state rallied round him, recently there has been quite an ugly controversy about a dance contest.

I might add that I was quite surprised and, in fact, amused by some of the contestants who were celebrities but teamed up with a good dancer to dance for the judges. They were cricketer Ajay Jadeja, well-known singer Abhijit, a TV chef called Sanjeev Kapoor and even Jassi under her real name. Towards the end of the contest, it was found that a competitor had bought up a lot of coupons, or whatever, for voters and while most people considered this unethical, the contestant and her supporters did not. In the end, the contest was won by Jassi under her real name Mona Singh and it was obvious that she had won not because of any particular talent in dancing but because of her role as Jassi, the girl next door, before she became a glam puss and the whole serial lost its charm and popularity. And for those of us viewers who are neither professionally nor emotionally involved, these contests reduce themselves to a popularity contest for the channel concerned and become a quick way of getting high viewership figures.

I have noticed for some time a distinct deterioration in English anchoring on NDTV. Gone are the days when trainers from the BBC and ITV used to come to Delhi to train the early batch of anchors, some of whom went to the best national and international universities. Some of them are now in top positions and show up the new batches for their substandard qualities. One reason for the drop in standards, I think, is that some of the best anchors have been switched over to NDTV Profit. And, incidentally, NDTV’s Hindi anchors are still of very high quality. I shall quote as examples, two anchors who appear in news bulletins at prime time.

Sunetra Choudhury is an excellent reporter but she anchors the studio news like a walk in the park, with long pauses, smiles and a generally casual and complacent air. As for Jyotsna Mohan, she has never had much sense of punctuation, and she drops her volume after an outside reporter has spoken loud and clear. She is sometimes inaudible and there is a general air of confusion about her anchoring. In the programme on Khan Market, while the captions repeatedly mentioned that Khan Market had been evaluated as one of the 24 most expensive retail outlets globally, Jyotsna kept on saying it was one of the most expensive markets in Delhi. Unforgivable.

With competition hotting up, NDTV English had better pull up its socks and choose quality anchors for prime time and, indeed, all viewing. It simply cannot afford to rest on its oars.