Amitabh Bachchan’s KBC show finds a new avatar at this govt school in Mirzapur

Jaasa Bhagora village (Mirzapur), Uttar Pradesh

Unrattled by the trains that thunder past every now and then, about 40 bright-eyed children lean forward, taking in the action on the stage.

A quiz contest is underway and the tension is palpable. A student is in the hot seat, and the time is ticking. Will she or won’t she get the right answer?

Every Saturday, Purva Madhyamik Vidyalaya, in Jaasa Bhagora village in Chanbe block in Mirzapur district, Uttar Pradesh, is filled with a special buzz of excitement. Because it is the day there will be an edge-of-the-seat session of KBIC, or Kaun Banega Intelligent Child? It is very reminiscent of its more famous predecessor, KBC, Amitabh Bachchan’s show Kaun Banega Crorepati!

The weekly quizzing is the brainchild of Satyendra Singh, a 40-year-old government school teacher who wanted to do something to engage the rural students better with their studies in an entertaining, yet impactful way. Children from classes six to eight study at the Purva Madhyamik Vidyalay.

“I came to this school in 2016 from Chitrakoot on a transfer. At that time there were just 92 children studying in the school and there was just one teacher,” Singh told Gaon Connection.

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Soon three more teachers were posted there and they decided that they would put their heads together and come up with a teaching plan that would cater to the needs of the children.

"Despite our best efforts, we somehow were not able to engage the children or grab their attention as we would have liked to,” Singh said.

It was then they realised that the children in their school were great fans of the television show, Kaun Banega Crorepati.

The kids loved discussing the show. And, the teachers decided to make this an effective method of imparting learning.

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From KBC to KBIC

“We decided to start a programme that was both educational and entertaining. And, so began Kaun Banega Intelligent Child (KBIC),” Singh said.

Two students from each class are selected the previous day to find questions from their general science books that they then put to their classmates in the morning assembly, after the prayers. Each of the selected students poses three questions. These questions are noted down by the class monitors into a notebook and compiled into a collection.

“We now have a big data of questions and it is these questions we ask at the KBIC. Those students who are interested in participating in the game, take the questions from their class monitors and prepare them,” Satyendra explained.

He has a pact with the children that he will only ask questions from the store of questions they all now have. Before the game begins, the students are asked a question and whoever answers first and correctly gets to participate.

“In each session of KBIC we ask 10 questions from the collection we have and depending on their performance, we then distribute certificates that have ‘Good’, ‘Better’, ‘Best’ and ‘Intelligent’ written on them,” the teacher said.

Hot Seat and Lifelines

Just like it is there in KBC, the school’s KBIC also has a ‘Hot Seat’. The student who won the ‘Intelligent’ certificate is now asked rounds of questions, and he or she has the same option Amitabh Bachchan’s participants have.

There are three lifelines, one ‘50-50’ option where two wrong answers from the multiple choices are removed, making it easier for the student to make a safe guess, and the final option where they can ask the audience for help.

“I remember feeling so sad when I could not continue on the hot seat as I answered a question wrong,” Pranjali Dubey, a class seven student, told Gaon Connection. But that has made her only more determined to study the questions better, participate again and win, she said. “I finally won the ‘intelligent child’ certificate,” Pranjali said proudly.

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“This school is much better than any private or convent school that we all wanted our children to go to,” Mahendra Kumar Gupta, whose niece Ayushi Gupta studies in this school, told Gaon Connection. He said the innovative methods teachers use in the school to get children to engage better, understand better and be informed, has worked wonders.

Due to the efforts of Singh and other teachers, the student strength at Purva Madhyamik Vidyalaya has jumped from 92 children to now 178.