SMS voting

With the plethora of reality shows catering to every possible variant of the Indian daily life(dance, singing, regional variants, who loses the most weight, ...I wouldn't be surprised if there is one on who has the highest/lowest blood alcohol level when driving an SUV soon), winners are now no longer decided by who is really good, but by the amount of SMS (text messages) they are able to generate.

We have all seen this with the first Indian Idol which Abhijit Sawant won handily thanks to all the sms' he got to the most recent version of the same show where Prashant Tamang won because of his geographic origin

What was unacknowledged so far has now become blatant - competitors openly appealing to their regional cohorts to vote for them since they are Punjabi or Marathi or Gujrati on Jhalak Dikhla Jaa.

Talent as differentiator is G O N E and in its place is the sheer volume of text messages that a contestant can generate whether through regionalistic pandering or emotional blackmail

I got this sms today on the same topic (copyright ascribed to unknown person :P)

एकदा हत्ती आणि माकडाची Boxing Match सुरु असते. हत्ती माकडाला खूप मारतो. त्याचे दात पाडतो, नाक फोडतो, पाय मोडतो.

But still the monkey wins! How?

त्याला जास्त sms मिळतात.

Loosely translated: an elephant and a monkey have a boxing match; The elephant hammers the monkey, breaks his nose, his teeth and his legs. But yet the monkey wins! How? since he got the largest number of SMS'

The mobile companies and the TV channels are making a lot of money in this process. How much money? In the last 9 days of the recent Indian Idol, 70 million SMS were received -- that translates to a whopping 210 Million rupees (USD 5.25M). See Nikhil Pahwa's post and the comments on this topic. Kamla Bhatt has an interesting post on the same topic.

दर्शकांचे मात्र माकड़ होत आहे

So when do we start voting on who should be on the Indian Cricket team?