SING FOR THE NATION, WHATEVER THAT IS A message on the mobile phone can create singing heroes and people’s icons. Prashant Tamang is the new Indian Idol, born out of emotions both parochial and patriotic. But does the Indian market have space for so many stars? Like anyone who lives in a musical land, I enjoy good music, and look forward to hearing new voices. This is possibly the commonest reason that pushed up the TRP on the talent-hunt shows when they first started appearing on television. There may be controversies regarding wheeling-dealing behind the sets, or the disappointed comments about the ‘public’s’ poor taste after the results. But the popular programmes on TV do bring forward aspiring young adults from places and groups from which people would have been shy earlier of trying the avenues to stardom or fame, or would have found these inaccessible. The democracy of talent and merit is always exciting. But this democracy, in shows with appellations like Indian Idol and Voice of India, is allied to national identity. As long as we surrender our grey cells to the dominant political discourse, this association is inevitable. This is where the fun comes in. Since popular voting is decisive, the competitions expose the paradox that lies at the core of the Indians’ concept of nation. Each contestant is identified not just by name but by the place he or she belongs to. He comes from Tamluk, West Bengal, she comes from Salem, Tamil Nadu. Are the Bengalis doing better than the ‘South Indians’? The Gujarati girl from Calcutta might win, not the Bengali boy from Delhi. This could be split up further, and still further, if political correctness did not stand in the way. But those splits are there, beneath the surface. One of the most touching moments for me, during one show, came when a young man from the largest minority community said, when appealing for votes, something like this: “Please vote for me from the whole of India. I am an Indian. I want to sing for India.” That poignant moment, which seemed to encapsulate within it an entire history of a land and its peoples, struck me also as a gloss on the paradoxical components of globalization. As trade and communication make the world smaller, as competitors from unknown corners of the country present their talents on a nationally visible stage, it is the village and its parameters — local, regional, religious — that must enter into an exchange with the ‘national’, as on a larger and different stage, it must with the global. It is a political position; not even the ‘universality’ of art can offer an escape. However indirect the cause, there is an inevitability in the way that the intense regionalism encouraged by these talent hunts exploded in Siliguri. That was political. But there are more lessons that the shows have to teach us, and they are not musical. BHASWATI CHAKRAVORTY