Raga Ratnam Junior - a post-mortem of the final 3 prizes

I notice a significant difference in marks by one of the in-house judges. These marks were hidden during the final day's prize declaration, several of my friends who were present called me and told me about this element of doubt, confusion and surprise regarding the declaration of winner. Raga Ratnam Junior was a show which consistently kept the quality element throughout it’s entire journey and it was really surprising to notice a surprise factor at the final moments of it’s culmination.

It is in our blood to criticise whatever good things happen in this world. It starts from a simple sadhya we attend cribbing either salt was little bit more or Aviyal was too thick or even the cherupazham was too small. It is very easy for us to judge from outside what really happened. However, here in this case, when we are looking at consistency of the performers and the judges in their final judgement.

Doing a post-mortem of the final day’s scores given by all the 7 judges we clearly notice something irregular.



Marks scored in the Kacheri round added with the Marks given by the external judges clearly shows a consistency element leading to the best performer amongst the three gem. I am not under-rating Arjun’s capabilities and fighting spirits, but when we consider the performance on the final day as well as the penultimate episode, it was Harishankar who performed better among the two. A rewind of the recordings will clearly highlight the differences and shortfalls on those two days. If we consider also a grading system based on the performances by the three, we will see a different set of winner for this title.

Here again, this is one outstanding programme, which was not ruled by highly prized gift packet and/or sponsored by publicity seeking Reality sponsors and so I do not want to add an element of confusion to the awards already declared.

My disappointment is how on earth Sri Kavalam Sreekumar ji, who happened to be their in-house groomer for this show, managed to give entirely different set of marks for the 1st and 2nd place? Was it an addition mistake or was it an after-effect of some unhappy incident during the grooming sessions cribbing in his mind and creeping above board over and over. Or is it an opportunistic exhibition of a professional rivalry with one of the family members of this young talent, who happened to be born in a legendary musical family, which obviously not his fault. Whatever the case may be, we all have seen in our epics like Mahabharatha that undue favouritism amongst disciples to make way for one to become a leader over duly deserving other has finally created in self destruction of the Guru himself and we sincerely hope it will not be the case here. If mistake has been committed, it is time to do a self analysis by those involved as it is happening too many times and nature is one thing which has immense amount of patience, but when it loses it’s patience, the destruction will be too strong to defend.

This is an exceptional case where Amrita TV cannot be held responsible for the errors made and congratulating once again all the three gems and all the 15 finalists who participated in this wonderful programme for their outstanding efforts to promote real and soulful music. They are very young and have already covered a lot of miles in terms of knowledge, publicity and popularity which their peers could never even dream about.

Special mention to Sri Dakshinamoorthy Swamy and K L Sreeram for their detailed judgements and Sri Binny Krishnakumar, Sri Sankaran Namboothiri, Sreevalsan J Menon, Anuradha Krishnamoorthy, Sri Jagannatha Varma (excuse me for all others who participated) for their dedicated support. I take this opportunity to thank once again the producer of this show, presenter and accompanying artists who performed exceptionally well throughout the entire duration. God bless you all to continue your dedicated work to promote true talents.