The new Star Voice of India 2 started airing on Star Plus this Friday (18th July) onwards. For the past month or so, the promos had been boasting of featuring participants from all 24 Indian states. It was unnerving for me to realize that the number of states in India had shrunk to 24 without so much as giving me a perfunctory warning. I had been trying to work it out mentally which states had been deemed unimportant enough to be left out of the competition - would it be based on economic considerations, geographical placement, political considerations, size, population or some other factors - none of which seemed to be valid enough for me.
The clouds of mystery cleared when the first episode was aired and the bright sun burned the very vestiges of respect I might have had left for TV producers. The 7 northeastern states were being referred to under one name - the seven sister states. While the other participants were from Bihar, Maharashtra, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, those participants were from the 'seven sister states'.
Why the alienation, why the blanket nomenclature, why deny them their individual identity and a spot each for themselves? Why must they be clubbed together under one banner of location, culture and heritage while every other state gets full leverage? Isn't it this cavalier attitude and insensitive treatment of the north-east that has led us to this day when they demand their basic rights, and are treated as foreigners in their own land.
My sister's just started going to college in the Delhi University. For years, I have read reports of female students from these states being treated as 'easy meat' and being molested on buses, on the roads and being a general target of ridicule. During the ragging days, most attempts are directed towards them and my sister has confirmed these facts first-hand. They are forced to speak in Hindi, made fun of and generally not accepted as one of our own.
It hurts. The low level of understanding and innate prejudices in young students still in their teens, the blatant publicity and corporate undermining of sections of the population for... for what? I would still understand, not agree but still understand if they were to make financial gains from such a gesture - but how would acknowledging seven states with their real names have affected their capitalistic aims is utterly beyond me.
The clouds of mystery cleared when the first episode was aired and the bright sun burned the very vestiges of respect I might have had left for TV producers. The 7 northeastern states were being referred to under one name - the seven sister states. While the other participants were from Bihar, Maharashtra, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, those participants were from the 'seven sister states'.
Why the alienation, why the blanket nomenclature, why deny them their individual identity and a spot each for themselves? Why must they be clubbed together under one banner of location, culture and heritage while every other state gets full leverage? Isn't it this cavalier attitude and insensitive treatment of the north-east that has led us to this day when they demand their basic rights, and are treated as foreigners in their own land.
My sister's just started going to college in the Delhi University. For years, I have read reports of female students from these states being treated as 'easy meat' and being molested on buses, on the roads and being a general target of ridicule. During the ragging days, most attempts are directed towards them and my sister has confirmed these facts first-hand. They are forced to speak in Hindi, made fun of and generally not accepted as one of our own.
It hurts. The low level of understanding and innate prejudices in young students still in their teens, the blatant publicity and corporate undermining of sections of the population for... for what? I would still understand, not agree but still understand if they were to make financial gains from such a gesture - but how would acknowledging seven states with their real names have affected their capitalistic aims is utterly beyond me.
