Politician Amar Singh with the Bachchans at the foundation-laying ceremony of Srimati Aishwarya Bachchan Degre... Read More

DAULATPUT ( BARABANKI ): Ten years ago, a 10-bigha land owned by Big B spun big dreams for impoverished villagers of Daulatpur, 70km from Lucknow. The non-descript village catapulted to sudden stardom after millennium hero Amitabh Bachchan accompanied with wife Jaya, son Abhishek and daughter-in-law Aishwarya laid the foundation of Srimati Aishwarya Bachchan Degree College in 2008. A decade later, not a brick has been laid on the ground and the foundation stone lies dumped in a dusty corner of the gram pradhan's house. But Daulatpur didn't stop dreaming despite the star project remaining a non-starter. Villagers resorted to crowd-funding to build a degree college, just 500m away from Bachchan's barren plot.

The galaxy of stars which descended on Daulatpur along with the Bachchan family 10 years ago also included political heavyweights Mulayam Singh Yadav, Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu, former Jammu and Kashmir CM Farooq Abdullah, former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala. And the grandiose launch coincided with the 52nd birthday of the then Man Friday of the Yadav clan and Bachchan's close friend, Amar Singh.

But 18-year-old Geeta, a resident of Daulatpur, is smiling now. From July, she won't travel 30km to pursue her dream of higher education. She will just walk down to Suratganj to study in college. Villagers pooled in Rs 60 lakh and constructed a building, which currently houses 12 classrooms. More than 10,000 sq metres of land was donated by a village teacher's father and his brother for the campus. And the man with the mission was Satyawan Shukla, 40-year-old teacher of the village.

The co-educational college has been christened Daulatpur Degree College, affiliated to RML Avadh University, Faizabad and will open with two courses - BA and BSc. The managing committee comprises villagers who donated money. The college's library was recently inaugurated by Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari of Sahitya Akademi, Delhi.



In Video: Why education in UP's Daulatpur is still waiting for Amitabh Bachchan?