A poor government clerk from a desolate region of eastern India has become the first person ever to win $1 million on an Indian game show.
Sushil Kumar’s staggering win on the popular Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” has transformed him into a role model for millions of aspiring youth yearning to escape from lives of poverty and find a role in India’s burgeoning economy.
Kumar’s win echoes the plot of the 2008 Oscar-winning film “Slumdog Millionaire,” whose impoverished protagonist won the grand prize on the show.
Kumar and his wife of five months wept when Indian movie legend Amitabh Bachchan, the show’s host, handed them a check for 50 million rupees (just over $1 million) after the contestant gave all the right answers on the show.
“You have created history. Your grit and determination has made you come so far in this show,” Bachchan said.
Before Kumar went on the program, which was taped Tuesday and will air next week, he earned $120 a month as a government office worker and supplemented his income by working as a private tutor in the small town of Motihari in the eastern state of Bihar.
Kumar, 26, told viewers his family was so poor they couldn’t afford a television set, forcing him to go to a neighbor’s home to watch the quiz show. Watching him tick off correct answer after correct answer, his neighbors persuaded him to try out for the show, he said.
The trip to the Mumbai studio where the show is taped was his first ride in a plane and his first visit to a big city, he said.
Kumar had clear, if modest, plans for the money.
He said he will use some to pay for a preparatory course so he can take India’s tough civil service exam, which could lead to a secure and prestigious lifetime job.
He said he will also buy a new home for his wife, pay off his parents’ debts and give his brothers startup cash so they can set up small businesses.
And he plans to build a library in Motihari so the children of his village will have access to the books and knowledge he so desperately craved, he said.
Meanwhile, the combined wealth of India’s richest people has fallen nearly 20 percent over the last year, due to factors including inflation, falling stocks and corruption, Forbes magazine said on Thursday.
The business publication said the country’s 100 wealthiest individuals were now worth a total of $241 billion, down from $300 billion in 2010, according to its India Rich List 2011.
The number of billionaires on the list also fell from 69 to 57 in the same period, while the top 10 saw their combined wealth fall 25 percent from $150 billion to $113.6 billion.
“This has been a turbulent year for India’s richest,” Naazneen Karmali, the India editor of Forbes Asia, said.
“Despite the economy growing at close to eight percent, a spate of corruption scandals and rising inflation has taken a toll.”
Massive corruption allegations, coupled with a downturn in the global economy and spiralling input costs, have affected demand and company earnings, as well as investor confidence on the stock markets.
Mukesh Ambani was India’s richest man for the fourth year running, according to the Forbes list. The chairman of oil and gas conglomerate Reliance Industries had a net worth of $22.6 billion, down $4.4 billion from 2010.
British-based steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal was in second spot with a net worth of $19.2 billion — a 26 percent fall from last year, as shares in his ArcelorMittal steelmaking firm plunged.
Azim Premji, the head of India’s third-largest software outsourcer Wipro, was in third with $13 billion, also down 26 percent.
The biggest name to be hit was Mukesh Ambani’s younger brother, Anil, the chairman of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, who slid out of the top 10 for the first time.
He saw his net worth more than halved from $13.3 billion in 2010 to $5.9 billion this year, amid falling investor confidence and a probe into whether his firms were involved in a large-scale telecoms fraud.
The 10 richest Indians are:
1. Mukesh Ambani (Reliance Industries Ltd) $22.6 billion
2. Lakshmi Mittal (ArcelorMittal) $19.2 billion
3. Azim Premji (Wipro) $13.0 billion
4. Shashi and Ravi Ruia (Essar Group) $10.2 billion
5. Savitri Jindal (O.P. Jindal Group) $9.5 billion
6. Sunil Mittal (Bharti Airtel) $8.8 billion
7. Gautam Adani (Adani Group) $8.2 billion
8. Kumar Birla (Aditya Birla Group) $7.7 billion
9. Pallonji Mistry (Shapoorji Pallonji Group/Tata Group) $7.6 billion
10. Adi Godrej (Godrej Group) $6.8 billion