Bigg Boss, Big Entertainment, Big trouble

After the spectacular success of Season 1 and 2, Bigg Boss has again hit the television screen. The show is being aired on Colours and the host is none other than the Big B himself. It is a big comeback for Amitabh Bachchan, the Big B of Indian cinema, to the small screen after the huge success of Kaun Banega Crorepati.



Bigg Boss is the Indian version of the UK reality show, Big Brother, which was won by Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty 2 years back.

The show has run into trouble with the Information & Broadcasting ministry issuing a notice against the producers of the show. The series is under fire due to the telecast of certain objectionable scenes. Apparently, Aditi Govitrikar and Tanaaz Irani were shown pulling down the shorts of Raju Srivastava which amounts to vulgarity in India where celebrities are looked upon as role models. The I&B ministry has asked the producers to refrain from showing such stuff on TV; otherwise, the show will be pulled off the air.

The 13 participants include: television actors – Aditi Govitrikar, Bakhtiyar Irani, Tanaz Irani, Bollywood actresses - Shamita Shetty, Poonam Dhillon, Sherlyn Chopra, Vindu Dara Singh-the grandson of Dara Singh, and Raju Srivastava; singer Ismail Darbar; German model, actor and singer Claudia Ciesla; fashion designer Rohit Verma; Kamal R Khan- director and actor of the movie Deshdrohi; and Jaya Sawant – mother of item girl Rakhi Sawant.

The show has been in the news recently because Kamal R Khan has been of the show. This is the first time in India that any contestant has been shown the door because of his violent behaviour. It is learnt that the producers of Bigg Boss took the decision after all the participants threatened to walk out of the house if actor-director Kamal R Khan of Deshdrohi fame was not evicted.

Bigg



Boss is now thinking of bringing in Bollywood actor of yesteryears, Rajesh Khanna as a wild card entry. The actor will enter the house in a week or two, say insiders. Rajesh Khanna was the first choice for the show but due to procrastination at the eleventh hour by the actor, the show’s owners withdrew their offer. Going by what show officials have to say, Rajesh Khanna was reluctant to enter the house because he was not allowed to drink inside the house. Now, after the opprobrious exit of Kamaal Rashid Khan, the channel is once again trying to sign up the actor.

Although the producers are trying to make sure that the show breaks all records of popularity by roping in some the biggest names in Bollywood and Indian television, viewers think that the 2^nd season of the show was better than the present one. They feel that the show does not seem to show any of the spark or sizzle that Bigg Boss 2 undoubtedly had. Call them scripted or not, but the fact is, the deadly trio of Rahul Mahajan, Sambhavna Seth and Raja Choudhary were a class apart, setting really high standards for the show with which, sadly, Season 3 of Bigg Boss is hard put to compete.

Kapil Sibal and IIT Entrance

Kapil Sibal has triggered the debate again, this time on the procedure for entrance to the IITs. The Human Resource Development minister said on October 19 that the selection criteria for admission to the IITs should not be solely the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) but weightage should also be given to the results of the board exams. He talked about raising the cut-off marks for IIT entrance from 60% to 80-85% in the board exams.

In defense of his proposal he said that this step will not only ensure that the students pay more attention to board exams but also check the mushrooming of coaching centers all over the country. He asserted that this step will ensure greater attention by students to their board exams rather than a lop-sided focus on the study material provided by the coaching centres.

The minister is not wrong when he says that the coaching centres make every student dream that they can make to the IIT’s and for that dream they charge anything between Rs 50,000 to 2 lakhs. Not everybody is capable of paying such amounts but parents somehow manage to pay only to make sure that their child ends up in one of the IIT’s. Also the coaching for the IIT-JEE start from Std 8 when students don’t really know what their area of interest is. Students who take science in +2 are sometimes forced by their parents to prepare for the JEE.

His statement drew a lot of criticism from the students and some ex-IITians .They are of the view that raising the limit is not a sound move as the grading pattern of the CBSE/ICSE is very different from the state boards. This step will further add to the problems of the poor students who don’t score 80% and above in their board exams.

Out of the 3.75 lakh students who appeared for JEE this year, 55,000 were from Andra Pradesh. A study cited that out of the 8295 students who got selected into the IIT’s this year, 2500 were from Andhra Pradesh and out of those 2500, 1000 students did not score above 80% in their board exams.

Some ex-IITans, who did not score 80% in their board exams but have managed to crack the IIT-JEE, feel that it is unnecessary to raise the cut-off. According to them board exams should not be the criteria for getting into the IITs. Cracking the IIT entrance is all about intelligence and that should not be associated with the board results. They further opine that the coaching centres give them some quick tips to solve complex problems that are a part of the question paper for the IIT entrance exam.

All these and many other reactions probably made the minister to backtrack from what he had said a day earlier. He said that 80% is not a prerequisite for IIT entrance and that it is up to the IITs to decide on the selection procedure and his ministry has nothing to do, either directly or indirectly, with their functioning. He said that a committee will be formed which will revise the system for entrance to the IITs by 2011. Sibal on Tuesday clarified that the only decision that had been taken by the IIT Council was that the IITs would submit a report in January next year on "rationalizing the JEE".

Sach Ka Saamna

Is “Sach Ka Saamna” really all about truth?

The urge to air reality shows on Indian television started with MTV’s show, ‘Roadies’ in 2003. A colossal hit, it paved the way for many more reality shows to take centre stage in the Indian television industry scenario. The most popular shows currently being aired are: Bigg Boss Season 3, Sach Ka Saamna and Is Jungle Se Mujhe Bachao. Of the three, the most controversial has undoubtedly been Sach Ka Saamna.

Sach Ka Saamna (SKS) is a new show on Star Plus, with the aim of asking really hard questions on national TV to participants who will answer such questions in the hope of receiving up to Rs. 1 crore in prize money. SKS is the Indianized version of the international reality show, ‘The Moment of Truth’. It revels in asking 50 questions that test a person’s ability to answer them truthfully. The show, which airs on Star Plus during 10:30 – 11:00 pm on weekdays, was launched on July 15 this year. Hosted by Rajiv Khandelwal, SKS features a combination of celebrities and normal people, with Smitha Mithai, a middle class housewife, being the first person on the show, followed by actor Yusuf Hussain and former Test cricketer for India, Vinod Kambli.



The show has had the biggest opening in the history of Indian television.

There have been a lot of issues with the airing of Sach Ka Saamna. People have opposed the show because they think that it violates the basic moral code of Indian society. Sometime back, it would have been difficult to believe that a show like ‘The Moment of Truth’ could have an Indian version; now, not only are people from all across the country eager to participate in the show but it has gained tremendous popularity among viewers as well.

The show is virtually equivalent to baring yourself in public. A person is seated in front of their families and friends and asked whether he has betrayed them or felt anything for his family. Even more direct questions related to their sexual habits (such as when a contestant was asked whether he had sex with a girl younger than his daughter) are also not taboo. One wonders how long this show will go on before questions are asked in Parliament and the outrage forces a clampdown.

Kamal Akhtar, a Samajwadi Party MP, doesn’t like SKS because “obscene questions are asked by the programme’s anchor.” MPs protested in Parliament against the show saying that the questions asked on the show were inappropriate and that it was an outrageous serial which should be banned.

According to the show’s producers, the participants are aware of the show’s format and they don’t have any problems in answering those questions.



As protagonists of the serial, they opine that if people don’t like the show they have the option of changing the channel.

On the one hand, while we are still not sure whether the results of polygraph tests are 100% accurate, the use of such tests to verify the contestants’ answers has raised a lot of eyebrows. And it still remains for us to find out how much truth there actually is in “Sach Ka Saamna”…

Sach Ka Samana

Vinod Kambli Breaks Down on the Sets of Sach Ka Saamna - Click here for more amazing videos

Sach Ka Samana