|

16 January 2010
REAR WINDOW

Sandipan Deb is an IIT-IIM graduate who wandered into journalism after

reading a quote from filmmaker George Lucas — “Everyone’s cage door is
open” — and has stayed there (in journalism, not a cage) for the past 19
years. He has written a book on the IITs and is the editor of Open.

EMAIL AUTHOR

Uncivil Engineer
3 Idiots’ portrayal of the IIT education system is both grossly unfair and untrue.

TAGGED UNDER | education | 3 Idiots | IIT

I cannot help but have my views on 3 Idiots coloured by the fact that I am
an IITian. Call it Imperial College of Engineering, call it whatever, but what
is obvious is that the film is a comment on the IIT system. And it is a grossly
unfair comment.

I went to do engineering because at that time, if you were a middle-class

boy and you were good in studies, it was either engineering or medicine
that was fore-ordained. There was no other option you even entertained. A
native dislike for Biology pushed me towards IIT, and there I went, quite
happily. Within days, I discovered that engineering did not interest me in
the least, and I spent the next years putting in just enough effort to survive.
Professors either reviled me or despaired of me. But I have never had so
much fun as I had on that campus.

Yes, our boys and girls are still rammed into the IITs by their parents,
whether or not they have any interest or innate talent. Coaching classes
turn aspirants into rote-monsters, and often, they end up without any life
skills. In the IITs, you encounter characters like Chatur Ramalingam, the
desperately competitive mugpot in 3 Idiots, but the truth is that such people
rarely ever top their classes. There is an integrity in the system that makes
sure that memorising and hard labour alone do not ensure the gold medal.
In all fairness, Aamir Khan’s Rancho, pure talent and innovation and no
respect for bookish learning, is also unlikely to snatch the top slot. To excel
in IIT, you need a bit of both.

I don’t know about today, but in my time in IIT, nervous breakdowns due to
academic pressure were not entirely uncommon. But, fair or unfair, we
would have only derision for these unfortunates. IITs are competitive
places, but it would be only those who took the competition too seriously
who would work themselves into all sorts of dark places. For the large
majority of students, it was merely a matter of doing well or not so well in
academics, and let the devil take the hindmost. I remember quite a few
occasions when my friends and I finished a semester exam, went for a film
and came back in the evening to study for the next day’s test.

But the greatest injustice that 3 Idiots does is to IIT professors. Every
professor in the film is shown as a moronic sub-human. The director of the
institute, Sahasrabuddhe, played by Boman Irani, is an evil maniac who
understands nothing but engineering, and is interested only in churning out
a bunch of obsequious automatons. Now, all IIT professors are hardly
perfect human beings, but this one-dimensional caricature of a teacher is
unfair and untrue by any standard.

Indeed, IIT campuses have a great tradition of teacher-student bonhomie.

Often, bored with the food that was being served in our hostels, we would
just land up at a professor’s home, clamouring for dinner. And the
professor’s wife would always graciously cook for us. Perhaps it was part of
some sort of gurukul philosophy, but we just took it for granted, as did the
professors.

Director Rajkumar Hirani has now made three films on the same
theme: ‘Goodness will prevail, and Boman Irani must be reformed.’ In
Munnabhai MBBS, it was medical studies, in Lage Raho Munnabhai, it was
Gandhigiri. Now, it’s engineering studies. I don’t know Hirani at all, but it
seems possible that he has had some truly scarring academic experiences
which have generally influenced his view. But even that cannot be an excuse
for the pre-climactic scene in 3 Idiots, where a childbirth happens using all
sorts of engineering jugaad. But the baby is not breathing. What to do? So
everyone starts chanting the idiots’ motto: ‘Aal izz well’, and the baby starts
kicking. I may be wrong, of course, but I thought engineering was all about
rationality and logic, and not about Manmohan Desai trickery.

However, the IITs can learn at least one thing from 3 Idiots. The toilets.
Any IIT student would die to have toilets like the ones Aamir Khan & Co
prance and frolic around in. Maybe they will even tolerate professors like
Irani.

OLDER COMMENTS
 FIRST 8 COMMENTS

PERMALINK

Hindi cinema was supposed to be for the unwashed masses. Now it is more and
more for the educated and even over educated. Who could have foreseen that a
film tackling the IIT syndrome will be the country's biggest recorded box office
success? Is this to be thought of as the masses taking a keen interest in people
who go to places like IIT or understood as a change in the audience wherein
only middle class Indians are watching cinema any more leaving the rest behind
(or maybe in the waiting hands of Maoists etc etc)? Is 3 Idiots success a good
sign for India or a bad case of 'Let Them Eat Cake'? Is there a guillotine being
whetted somewhere? Answers, gentlemen, are needed. The details of the film
and its treatment of teachers are unimportant.
20 JANUARY 2010 | RITWIK JHAVERI

READ ALL COMMENTS AD D Y O U R C O M M E N T

A L S O I N VO I CE S

Waiting for the Trigger

The next wave of reforms will determine the direction of the market. But can the
Government deliver?
23 JAN 2010| BY Sourav Majumdar

The Art of Dying

As in life, Jyotibabu was astoundingly lucky in death.
23 JAN 2010| BY Sandipan Deb

The Advantage of the Older Man

It is not fully understood why long-distance runners in their 30s are superior to
younger runners.
16 JAN 2010| BY Manu Joseph

SEE ALL