Last night at about 9 pm IST a 27 year old Graduate from
Champaran became a Crorepati. The introductory video that the channel broadcast
when he started his session at KBC, showed a life of misery- a house with a
caved in roof, a meager income of Rs. 6000 a month, a newly wed wife and no
prospects in his small town. But KBC changed all that. Over a period of an hour
Sushil Kumar made a giant leap to becoming a millionaire from being a pauper.
And that is one reason why, Ladies and Gentlemen, KBC works.
It works because it gives hope to the millions who spend
Rs.5/sms to get their entry in. The same five rupees they would otherwise have
saved and hoarded. In a country where very often reward does not meet effort
and education does not mean livelihood, KBC is a short cut to a transformed
life. You can be a nobody- a milkman from UP, an ordinary housewife from
Lucknow, or like our latest winner, a simple indebted Graduate from Champaran- the “Hot Seat” is a great equalizer. When you sit there, the chance to win and make
something is for once as much yours as those of the privileged. Mind you, it is
not a lottery. You must have a certain amount of intellect and emotional
strength to weather the process. After making it to the studio from amongst
millions who answer the very simple qualifying question, you must win another
round that tests speed and knowledge, and then only can you make it to the “Hot Seat”. Luck will get you in, but you must
fight the battle hard. So unlike a lottery, this prize money is “hard won” and
for the winners it retains a sense of self-respect. They can say they “earned”
it.
The other reason the show works is undoubtedly Mr. Bachan.
He knows what his status is in the country. People may not know who our Prime
minister is but everyone knows him. Yet when he greets you in the studio, he
treats you as an equal and exudes the sense that it is his privilege to be
there with you and hearty wish that you win something that day. Sure his
clothes are atrocious and on the bidding of the producers he highlights the
miseries of the participants and how the show will “transform” their lives, but
then we accept it because it is show business! On the show he makes his presence felt with his voice, his rendition of the questions, the
witty remarks, but never overpowers the participants. He understands that the
audience is “playing” with the person in the “Hot Seat” and for the show to
work, the participant must at all times stay the focus. The audience must connect with the contestant and not him.
Last night when Sushil Kumar won his millions, Amitabh Bachan hugged him and his family unmindful of the social gap that devided them despite the winner's new found bounty. He lovingly held on to the shy and shocked wife of Sushil Kumar who saw him then not just as Amitabh Bachan the superstar but as the man who had saved her and her family from a life of misery. For those moments when Sushil Kumar struggled to come to terms with what had just happened, Mr. Bachan did what he does best on the show, he was just another guy happy to be celebrating with you.
So the question again- why does KBC work in India? It is certainly not the intellectual drama of the questions, it is not just Amitabh Bachan, it works because it sells a dream. With a bang-on mix of hope, drama, glamour and simple
human stories, KBC works in India because it is a country where there are too
many under dogs and the people are starved for happy endings.
