Idol franchise challenges barriers of caste, ethnicity
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
NEW DELHI–For three months this summer, India's best loved celebrity figures – film stars and cricketers – took a back seat to an unknown group of young men and women from across the country.
These no-names were suddenly everywhere – on massive billboards lining major highways, in newspapers and magazines and on almost every television channel. Thousands of bloggers enthusiastically documented their every move.
These strangers were the chosen few who made it to the final stages of the third season of Indian Idol – a variant of the popular reality TV singing contest that gave birth to American Idol and Canadian Idol.
The euphoria had escalated so much by September that fixated viewers were planning entire weekends around the shows.
Television viewership records were broken and 70 million votes were cast as fans racked up huge cellphone bills hoping to catapult their chosen Indian idol to victory.
There isn't a simple explanation for why a singing contest show featuring a bunch of unknown aspiring singers has been such a mass hit in India.
It's a combination of the show's anyone-can-win attraction, and its success in reaching out to a wider, more marginalized states of the Indian public, in addition to the current upbeat sense of achievement in India as its international image has blossomed.
Moreover, reality TV shows such as Indian Idol are successfully challenging India's social barriers of caste, class and ethnicity, giving every Indian the chance to dream, and dream big.
"It's not just about talent," says Niret Alva, president of Midtech, the production house behind Indian Idol. "Its attraction works at many different levels. It's an avenue of self-expression, an avenue that allows for disparate parts of India to be mainstreamed."
It's not easy to become a star in a country of 1 billion people. In the cut-throat world of Bollywood, for example, most of the current talent come from famous film dynasties, or are well-known fashion models.
On Indian Idol, however, you don't have to be someone to make it. Instead, the show offers anyone in any part of India a chance to make careers in showbiz.
"There is a whole generation of young Indians who, thanks to democratic formats like Indian idol, are able to realize their dreams if they have the talent," says Albert Almeida, executive vice-president of Sony Entertainment Television, the channel that aired Indian Idol.
What made Season 3 of Indian Idol especially popular was that it reached out to a bigger cross-section of the Indian population by auditioning contestants from smaller towns.
Producers scoped for talent in 14 cities, reaching viewers desperate to see more of their kind represented in Tinseltown.
By making stars out of young people from regions better known for terror and violence, these shows are challenging negative stereotypes, and drawing hundreds of thousands of new fans.
The winner, Prashant Tamang, 24, is of Nepalese origin and hails from Darjeeling in east India. The other finalist, Amit Paul, 24, is from Shillong, capital of Meghalaya, a little-known state in India's northeast.
"I am the first Nepali to be on this stage. I am sure my achievement is a matter of pride for the whole Nepali community across the world," Tamang told a local newspaper.
Passion ran so high that nearly 2,000 supporters of Tamang marched to protest a radio deejay's derogatory comments about him. Indian troops had to be called after more than 30 people were hurt in clashes between police and fans.
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