Will you watch Sushil Kumar win Rs5 crore on 'KBC'?

You must have read about the man who has won the highest prize money on Kaun Banega Crorepati — Sushil Kumar. He didn’t even have the money to send SMSes in the first few seasons. This season, he somehow made it to the hot seat. Not only that, he also won a life-changing Rs5 crore. Great for him, but we seem to have missed that this is even better for the show.

How? Aren’t you hooked to his story already? Poor man, underdog, etc. He is the big story today, the poor man, the aam admi. Everyone is talking about him. He is back in vogue. It’s fashionable now to talk about the poor man. That’s how KBC featured a Yavatmal farmer’s widow who won Rs6.4 lakh or a wheelchair-bound person from Rajasthan who won a similar amount.

Compare this to KBC’s third season where you got the sense that only good looking people were making it to the hot seat. Somehow, they just happened to be from the upper middle-class profile, a category liked by the big advertisers. The TRPs were dipping, but the spin was that it was being watched by the spenders.

This is not to hang the KBC showmakers, but somehow one gets the feeling that this is a cheap attempt to boost TRPs. This happened in the first season as well, where for a long time no one won the top prize. The interest levels sagged and the word was that Big B — and not the contestants — was the only one making any money on the show. It was too much of bad publicity and suddenly we had Harshvardhan Navathe winning Rs1 crore. And what a coincidence, it also came around Diwali.

Today, the rules of the game have changed. We don’t know how, but the poor man is the toast of the nation, or, for that matter, the world. Suddenly, the left is cool. We are already wondering why we can’t have an Occupy Wall Street movement on our own Dalal Street.

When the planning commission decided that anyone who could spend more than Rs32 a day was not poor, hell broke loose. It’s another matter that we may like to read about it but will do nothing to ensure that the poor man gets that Rs32 in an honourable manner. That’s why while everyone lauds the Right to Education Act, where schools have been asked to compulsorily admit 25% poor kids, everyone is also concerned if their kid will get ‘spoilt’ in their company. We have become a society where we like to watch things from a distance, but will not be a part of change. That’s why we like watching the Yavatmal farmer’s widow win money, but will cringe if farmers are given subsidies.