India’s New Competition Digest

“No one is too insignificant to make a difference through knowledge,courage and effort,” affirms Siddharth Basu,chairman of Big Synergy Productions that produces KBC.

The popular quizmaster admits that the strategy was devised in order to rekindle the waning interest in the quiz show. A few of last year’s contestants,especially the burqa-clad Rahat Tasleem from Jharkhand,who walked away with Rs 1 crore,helped them realise that everyone loves the underdog. The success of Vikas Swarup’s book Q&A,adapted into the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire in 2009,only reaffirmed the fact.

“Across the world,TV programmers are playing up the contestants’ lives and what winning means to them,” Basu says. Picking on this trend,the KBC team shifted focus to the real India in KBC 5. “We opened a window to Bharat,where the common man lives with simple dreams,” he adds.

The show has also demonstrated that despite the literacy issues which India battles,the common man is armed with the most important tool — knowledge. The urban India with access to resources seems to pale in comparison. Of course,there are screening processes,general knowledge tests and interviews till the team finds the right representation in a candidate. “We pick candidates on the basis of their stories of hope,” says Basu.

Interestingly,KBC usually reserves 50 per cent candidature for women,and decided to raise that number further this year. “Most of them want to be recognised as intelligent women and not those bottled-up in tradition,” Basu explains.

The changes introduced this season are reaping heavy dividends as the average rating of KBC this year is twice that of any other non-fiction show.