Even the Poorest in India Fall Under the ´Millionaire´ Spell
By BARRY BEARAK
OMBAY, India -- Maqbool Ahmed has dreams of instant wealth,
which ordinarily would require a mighty burst of imagination from a
man living in the Bombay slum of Geeta Nagar, a hideous warren of
hovels where the air reeks of kerosene and fish, and there are only
24 toilets for 6,000 people.
But come 9 p.m., Mondays through Thursdays, Ahmed, like
virtually everyone else in this monsoon-swamped ghetto, ignores the
leaky roof, turns on a cheap black-and-white television and watches
the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire"
"Even I know Josip Broz Tito was not the leader of Egypt,"
Ahmed said confidently last night, harrumphing at a confused
contestant named Ravi who must have slept through the Cold War and
was now using a valuable "lifeline" to phone his friend Murli for
help. "The correct answer is Yugoslavia."
Since early July, India -- a nation where the average person
would need 2,325 years of income to become a millionaire -- has been
obsessed with "Kaun Banega Crorepati," the Indian version of the
game show created in Britain and now exported to 31 countries
including the United States, Japan, Israel, Finland and Argentina.
East is East and West is West, and this is where the twain have
met.
"Everyone understands the language of money," said Ahmed, 41,
who peddles envelopes from a pushcart for a living. "The show is
simple to follow. I am not so smart, and I know many of the
answers. Maybe I will be a millionaire."
The show is unusual here because of its extravagant production
quality and the large jackpot. Crore is a number meaning 10
million. A crorepati, then, is actually someone with 10 million
rupees -- about $222,000 at current exchange rates.
Ratings are as yet an inexact science in India, but by some
counts "Crorepati" is being watched nightly by more than 100
million people. In a single leap it took Star TV, owned by Rupert
Murdoch, from the No. 3 to the No. 1 spot among the nation's cable
channels.
"We have 85 percent of the viewers in Bombay and 93 percent in
Kanpur," said Sameer Nair, who is in charge of the network's
programming. "Of course, the joke is: what are those other 7
percent up to?"
This can be a tough country for television. In 1965, when in
America Ozzie and Harriet were starting their last season, there
were still fewer than 1,000 television sets in all of India. Even
today, only about one-third of the households have televisions --
and less than half of those are set up for cable or satellite
reception.
India's population has topped 1 billion, but the nation is a
polyglot of 17 major languages. Most people in Calcutta do not know
what the people in Madras are saying. "The Wheel of Fortune" was
tried without much success.
"India has no national language and has a low level of
literacy; this is not a place for a game like that, based on word
play," said Amit Khanna, a television executive.
"Crorepati" is in Hindi, with English thrown in here and
there. Its popularity is highest in the nation's so-called Hindi
Belt in the north.
The show is hosted by Amitabh Bachchan, a legendary leading man
in Indian films and now a suave graybeard at age 58. His movie
career had hit the skids, and "Crorepati" has become his
resurrection. Contestants occasionally kiss his feet. Fan letters
sometimes come written in blood.
"I was apprehensive about whether I could deliver the goods,"
Bachchan said in an interview, relaxing in an apartment built for
him near the stage set. It is modeled after a Swiss chalet. "In
films, people always put words in my mouth. Here, it is a very ad
hoc, ad lib kind of atmosphere."
Like Regis Philbin, he has become famous for this litany: "Are
you sure? Confident? Is that your final answer?" It is presumed
here that this is a Bachchan touch, part of his pose as a
philosopher-guide.
But the "Millionaire" format, as created by the British
production company Celador, is highly scripted. It is the fast food
chain of quiz shows.
The patter is precisely pat. The look of each set is identical.
A computer program synchronizes the music and lighting. British
technicians train the local crews.
"They send us a production bible, about 300 pages," said
Ravinath Menon, Crorepati's executive producer. "It's all a
formula. Our idea was not to re-invent the show, but to duplicate
the show."
While the Indian masses are wild about the program, some of the
intelligentsia have been sniffy. P.C. Joshi, a retired academic,
said he has an "instinctive revulsion" to the show and has
refused to watch it.
In 1985, Joshi headed a national commission that warned that
careful controls must be maintained on television programming or
Indian culture will be befouled.
Nevertheless, such taint came to seem inevitable in the early
'90s when Western tastes began to invade the airwaves via
satellite. Shows such as "The Bold and the Beautiful" were
decried for licentious plots dependent on bed-hopping. In time,
however, local producers have developed their own various soap
operas rich with sexual escapades. It turned out that most people
here did not object to shows that depicted adultery, as long as the
adults involved were Indians.
"Crorepati," despite its Western roots, is not seen as an
invasion. "Money is money, finally, and I think Indians just adore
it and always have," said cultural critic Shanta Gokhale. "We're
inveterate gamblers."
Rival networks have game shows in the works that will offer
similar amounts.
But being on the show would seem to require far more luck than
is common in Geeta Nagar. People from there do call the show,
trying to register their names. For them, it is like buying a
lottery ticket: an expensive fantasy. Use of the public phone costs
about 50 cents, for many almost an entire day's pay.
Besides, few Muslims or Hindus from the lower castes have made
it on to the show. Those chosen are mostly professionals from big
cities.
"Only the bureaucrats seem to get to compete," Ahmed said
haplessly.
