Kaun Banega Crorepati has done well to showcase have-nots

Kaun Banega Crorepati’s Season V, currently on air, shows how TV can become a medium for the underprivileged. For, this time round, Amitabh Bachchan is in his elements wooing the havenots from all parts of lesser known India. So, if you are an upwardly mobile urban Indian, there is only a scant chance that you will ever get a call from KBC this year.

But this new avataar comes across as generously good. It is very gratifying to see how a young woman in the rural heartland of West Bengal who does not even have a TV at home, actually makes it to the hotseat and takes back Rs 25 lakh despite not knowing what a patta gobhi is! And then there was this handicapped Muslim man Yusuf Mallu who got Rs 12.5 lakh after getting his tears wiped by an ever attentive Bachchan. He suffers from a spine injury he sustained while going for a kite snatch.

Kudos to KBC for presenting so many inspiring stories of struggle and in its own way helping them out of predicaments. Rukhsana Kauser, the girl who fought with terrorists single-handed to save her parents, was as becoming a story as the girl from Laddakh who lost her entire family in the deluge. Another matter though that both did not know much about the questions to write home about. Yet, with the help of lifelines and some subtle prompting by Bachchan, they took home a decent amount, to be used to mitigate their struggles in life.

The story here is not about the money. It is about that face of India which seldom finds space in public eye. For example, the girl from Laddakh was only 16 and studying in Jammu when her entire family got wiped out. She had talked to her parents at 10 pm, and went off to sleep in the cushion of the knowledge that all was well back home. It was way past noon the next day that she got to know about the deluge. And for the next three days, did not know the fate of her family. It was only when she reached home somehow that she was told all was gone.

To hear this from her on national TV moved everyone no ends. And the loss somehow deluged the fact that this Maths student did not know the difference between a square and a circle! Had it not been for her sad plight in life which she was struggling against at such a tender age, the derision to the complete ignorance of her own subject would have been much more.

There are many such stories that emerge from this top charter this season and most of them tug at your hearts. Add to this the natural charisma of Bachchan and his instant connect with his subjects, and you have a good programme which you don’t mind stretching much beyond decent TV slottings — one-and-a-half-hour on prime time is no joke to sustain, but KBC somehow keeps it afloat effortlessly.

The programme has long become a phenomenon for which the entire nation waits every year. You have so many people telling you how they have made it their life’s mission to get to the hotseat, some even admitting to preparing 24X7 for a decade!

One must say the choice of contestants this year has been well researched. You have girlchildren who may have been killed in the womb, living to tell the story. You have housewives who studied after marriage in heartlands where schooling for girls is almost taboo. You have people who have lost all, you have wives whose spouses were killed by terrorists, you have sons who acknowledge the sacrifice of their fathers, fathers who have done it all for their parents and parents who can’t believe their progenies are actually paying tribute to them on national TV.

In all this, KBC is the medium through which unknown India’s unknown aspirations have found a unique showcase and the media-shy producer Siddharth Basu, the ultimate quizmaster now with a mission, needs to be mentioned in some awards list for such an effort.

As an aside, I must tell you how my household too is contemplating getting a rural sim card to somehow get the KBC team to answer their ghar baithey crorepati call. The effort though is yet to pay off.

Indeed, it has been quite a fruitful journey for Amitabh Bachchan himself. I remember in 2000 when he first ventured into KBC, how fidgety and unsure he was on the small screen. You almost felt sad for him back then. He was on verge of bankruptcy after bad business decisions on AB Corp. His superstardom was on the wane and all looked bleak for him and his family. KBC was his attempt to get a second lease of life and the show gave him his wish.

A decade later, both KBC and the superstar are in fine fettle, thanks to the keen eye the programme has kept on the heartbeat of the nation. Perhaps, it is time that other reality shows in their various avataars learn to mature and grow with the dignity with which KBC has grown.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 25 September, 2011