The Bachchans at the inaugural ceremony of the degree college in 2008

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 nondescript village catapulted to stardom after Amitabh Bachchan accompanied by 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 then villagers resorted to crowd-funding to build a degree college, just 500 metres away from Bachchan’s plot.

The galaxy of stars which descended on Daulatpur along with the Bachchan family 10 years ago also included political heavyweights. 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. 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, 40year-old teacher of the village. The co-educational college has been christened Daultapur Degree College, affiliated to RML Avadh University , Faizabad, and will open with two courses —BA and BSc.

The Bacchans gave the task to build the school to the Nishtha Foundation — run by SP MP Jaya Prada — and foundation secretary Devendra Kumar. Within two years, Nishtha Foundation went defunct and was replaced with Amitabh Bachchan Seva Sansthan (ABSS) headed by Amit Singh , the then-grampradhan. In 2012, the college was re-christened as Aishwarya Bachchan Girls’ Inter College for higher secondary students. Big B’s aide Rajesh Rishikesh Yadav handed a cheque of Rs 5 lakh to ABSS, for construction of the school.

“This was the first and the last installment from the Bachchans ,” says Amit Singh, secretary of ABSS and also the gram pradhan. When TOI tried to contact Jaya Bachchan, four-time Rajya Sabha MP from Uttar Pradesh, at her Juhu bungalow landline number, a security officer said, “Madam Bachchan has gone abroad and she can comment only when she returns to India.”

