Anil Thakraney on Deepali's Elimination

Sorry if this has been posted before..

Anil Thakraney is a very well-known columnist for Times Of India/Mumbai Mirror.. and this is what he had to say about Deepali's elimination in his column 'OuchPotato'.. in yesterday's & today's issue of Mumbai Mirror..

JAVEDBHAI IS RIGHT

Something very unfair happened on Sony's Indian Idol: A talented singer called Deepali got knocked out of the competition, because the final judging happens through SMS votes sent in by the programme's viewers, and we couch potatoes didn't like the girl too much. And the most significant point was made by Javed Akhtar (in my view, the most sensible judge from among all television singing contests), which is that the audiences are voting for performance and not the quality of singing. If you don't get what the polite lyricist is saying, let me put it in my crass words: because we musically-challenged audiences aren't able to tell a good singer from an average one, we get carried away by other factors — what state the candidate hails from, how cute he/she looks, how well he/she dances with Chi Chi, etc — and the singing itself become less important. Which then leads to a faulty and unjust judging process, which is perhaps why a good but Plain Jane singer like Deepali gets shown the door. This is the reason why I have always believed we audiences should not be doing the judging at all, we should leave that task to the experts.