Trigger warning: Mention of suicide
Entertainment media has more of an impact on our lives than we’d care to admit. Every second that we spend consuming content from platforms like The Viral Fever, Netflix etc. is every second that we internalise what we observe on our screens.
The Viral Fever was born in 2015, and had already made a name for itself as one of the more progressive platforms challenging pre-existing notions of the world. It didn’t even take Season 2 of Kota Factory more than a day to make it to the Trending tab on Netflix.
Shows like Kota Factory and Aspirants made it to the headlines because they tried to portray the often bleak and troublesome lives of IIT-JEE and UPSC aspirants. People opened their phones to watch Vaibhav and Abhilash but instead found themselves.
It sounds like the dream series to watch, right? One that realistically portrays everyday struggles of a student burdened by studies and coaching classes? Actually, it is not.
I won’t disagree with the fact that TVF Original shows did bring attention to issues that have often been overlooked. However, it is one thing to reflect an issue, entirely another to raise questions about its problematic aspects. When our screens begin to capitalise on our consumption, that’s where the problem begins.
Are Kota Factory And Aspirants Overrated?
Kota Factory has often been hailed as one of the best representations of the woes of an IIT aspirant. The dialogues, the setting, and the cinematography made it even better.
However, it takes more than that for a show to open up important conversations as grounds for discourse.
Despite knowing the politics behind coaching institutes in India and their inherent bias for toppers, treating the ‘average’ students as cash machines, Kota Factory makes no attempt to actually challenge this ideal.
The mental health of characters like Sushrut, Meena, and in fact all students is magically taken care of by motivational speeches by Jeetu Bhaiya, completely glossing over the fact that the 18-hour study schedule leaves a good amount of students depressed.
The sheer pressure from family members, the constant demoralisation due to less marks in tests and addiction to gaming, drugs and porn to deal with stress worsens the problems.
In the first season of the show, they talked about how all your friendships and memories in Kota become a regret if you don't clear the exam in the end. But in real life, it is a regret even if you clear: the scars are permanent in this neoliberal battlefield.
6/10
— Bijaya Biswal (@bijaya_biswal) September 29, 2021
Around 58 students died by suicide between 2013 to 2017, and the number has gone up since. We haven’t even taken financial stability into account here. On an average, it takes around 2 lakhs alone to cover the costs of IIT coaching, an amount that can only be procured by the financially privileged families. Add to this, lodging, accommodation, food and other expenses, it becomes out of bounds for an average person to even aim for coaching at Kota.
The inaccessibility of coaching facilities, the over-emphasis on IITs as the only goal in life and other peripheral issues combine to form a labyrinth that becomes impossible for teenagers and young adults to navigate.
What could have been the beginning of a culture that questioned this rat race instead turned into another romantic portrayal of the ‘battle’ that is JEE after a promising first season.
Likewise, released in 2021 itself, Aspirants brings to the fore the story of UPSC aspirants in Old Rajinder Nagar. However, being a TVF production, it proves itself an imitation of Kota Factory.
Aspirants fails to show how exam preparation impacts the lives of those who aren’t just students but adults and also the breadwinners of their families.
There’s a certain glorification of aspirants who leave their jobs to prepare for the exam, but it doesn’t highlight the repercussions faced by them when they fail to achieve their goals. Life is not a wish-granting factory, and sometimes, even hard work does not pay off.
The show had a great opportunity through the character of Sandeep Bhaiya to reflect the financial troubles undergone by students, and it did succeed, to an extent.
However, the way in which Sandeep Bhaiya himself gets a happy ending is not representative of the lakhs of students who do not clear the exam. Out of the 10 lakh students who apply for CSE every year, paying around 5 lakh for exam preparation in Old Rajendra Nagar, only 2000 are called for the interview.
There are significant number of aspirants who despite exhausting all of their attempts, fail to make it through. This does not just lead to a dilemma in terms of career options at the personal level but when accounted for at the broader level, the loss of economic productivity for the country is phenomenal.
Moreover, the show does not even poke the bear by confronting the controversial topic of reservations in examinations, the class/caste disparity, the gendered nature of the elements involved in the preparation, so on and so forth.
The willful ignorance of pressing questions that could have been raised in the so-called work of art and the resounding silence is instead filled in by justifiably sweet tracks of heartbreaks.
What Could Be Done Better?
One of the earliest productions of TVF, Pitchers also falls in the same category as that of Kota Factory. Launching your own startup company with no prior experience is just as hard as mediocre students suddenly getting top scores. Yes, Vaibhav, I’m looking at you.
Yet somehow, all these shows end up following more or less the same story: a person with a big dream struggling initially, but sooner or later achieving success, the quintessential formula for success in Bollywood, the only difference being these shows never talk about the reason for the struggles the individuals face.
What this leads to is a glorification of struggle to achieve your goals, completely disregarding the other factors such as financial and social freedom, mental health and the current geo-political landscape that affects success.
This is something that is called ‘hustle culture’ in the elite circles; for the underprivileged, it’s just another Tuesday. These characters, despite being well written with ample depth, end up questioning the rat race while wishing to win the rat race themselves.
Jeetu Bhaiya was not wrong when he said, “It is easy to say just be yourself, but you should always try to better yourself.” It is not wrong either to hold such shows to the same standards and expect them to do better than they did the last time.
Shows like Laakhon Me Ek prove to be better examples for TVF to take heed of when it comes to showing the reality without putting on a privileged perspective. TVF has great potential and it is time it left the art of mastering apolitical filmmaking and started writing shows that ask difficult questions.
The author is part of the current batch of the Writer’s Training Program.