Introduction
This brief article attempts to analyse
the depiction of overcoming school educational challenges among weak students
in two recent Indian movies, namely Nil Battey Sannata (2016, now
available on streaming services such as Amazon Prime Video and Jio Cinema) and Dhh
(2017, now available on streaming services such as Netflix). Whereas the first
is a Hindi film directed by Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, the second is a Gujarati film
directed by Manish Saini. Both these films were the debut feature films of
these directors. Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari worked at an Indian branch of the US
advertising agency Leo Burnett, and she claims that the story of the film was
inspired by the real-life stories she heard while producing a commercial for
the popular TV game show Kaun Banega Crorepati. Manish Saini, on the
other hand, was a student at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad and
according to him, the idea for the film was inspired by his experience at a
magic show in Ahmedabad during those days when he noticed some young boys
reacting very excitedly to the magician. Whereas the Hindi film was successful
enough to warrant a Tamil remake in the same year, the Gujarati film won the
National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Gujarati. Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari and
her spouse and former colleague, Nitish Tiwari, have gone on to have a
subsequent career in Bollywood. Manish Saini, on the other hand, has not made
any feature films thereafter.
Plot
summary
A brief summary of the plots of the
two movies is perhaps necessary for those who have not watched the movies. In Nil
Battey Sannata, a young woman, Chanda works as a domestic cleaner cum cook
(or as is termed in Hindi, a bai) and also works odd jobs in a factory
to supplement her income. She is either widowed or divorced. It is not made
evident in the film. Her life revolves around dreams for her daughter. Her
daughter Apeksha, however, is more world-weary and refuses to dream for a
better life. She is cynical and does not believe in social mobility. She
assumes that she too will have to work as a bai when she grows up. The
movie begins with her studying in class 10 and struggling with all subjects but
especially with mathematics. Her mother is shocked to hear that Apeksha has no
big dreams and is satisfied with her lot in life. Chanda desperately wants her
daughter to succeed and as one of her employers tells her, it is either kismat
(luck) or mehnat (hard work) which allows for social mobility. Since
poor people are out of kismat anyway, all that they are left with is
hard work. However, her daughter refuses to work hard because she is cynical
and demotivated. In order to motivate her, Chanda herself joins Apeksha’s
school as a student in class 10. Chanda was a class 10 dropout herself before
she began working as a bai. Realising the effort her mother was making
to dream of a better future for her, Apeksha manages to study hard, understand
mathematics and pass her class 10 examinations. The film ends with her
appearing for an IAS interview, the dream job her mother had envisaged.
Dhh is about three boys of
middle-class background who are backbenchers in school and who do not have much
interest in studies. The three boys are not homogeneous in character. One of
the boys, Kapil, is average in studies, one, Chirag, poor and another, Bajrang,
very poor. They hang out together and as a result the boy who is average in
studies also starts to perform poorer than usual. Being friends and hanging out
together make them a group which is punished together by their teachers. They
go to watch a magic show and then realise that the only way they can pass their
exams is if something miraculous such as being granted magic powers happen.
They write letters to the magician. They request the grandfather of one of the
boys, Chirag, to take them to meet the magician but the grandfather refuses
using some excuse or the other. One day they receive a letter from the magician
along with a small wooden toy. The magician tells them that if they recite
their text books to the toy and they take the toy with them to their
examination halls, the toy will tell them the answers to the questions. The
boys are encouraged by this seeming short-cut and they spend hours reciting
their text books to this toy. One of the boys mentions to the other two that
this toy will help them in all subjects except mathematics as reciting the text
book will not prove a useful method to get the answers to the questions in
their mathematics examination. He mentions that it is one subject which the
students need to study on their own. Later on, the boys discover that their
letters never reached the magician nor did the magician write back to them.
Rather, the grandfather in cahoots with the local postman, received their
letters and sent them the letter and the toy. The grandfather’s logic was that
if the boys believed they could pass, then they would work hard to make their
belief come true and all those hours of reciting the text book to the toy
helped them memorise the text book and it helped them in their examinations.
Whereas Kapil who was never very bad in studies comes second in class, Chirag,
who was average in studies, comes third but Bajrang who was very weak in
studies manages to pass and is the most overjoyed.
Plot
analysis
What both the movies highlight is
that with encouragement and motivation even the weakest of students can manage
to at least pass examinations. Whereas both movies are well-made and
inspirational, they do indirectly highlight certain issues affecting the
education system. The most important issue that they indirectly draw attention
to is that education is made synonymous with examinations. The goal of the
education system is to pass examinations and score well in examinations. The
learning outcome is not highlighted. In Nil Battey Sannata, emphasis is
laid on memorising mathematical formulae. Chanda, the mother, makes rhymes to
memorise mathematical formulae and her daughter also benefits from those rhymes
or mnemonics to aid memorisation. Mathematical formulae, in the movie, become
something to be memorised and applied. The practical use of such knowledge or
the relevance or irrelevance of trigonometry to the lives of citizens in
general is not made an issue in the movie. In Dhh, memorisation and
quiz-question type assessment systems are highlighted. The viewer does not get
to see how memorising their study material helps those students except for
passing examinations and education is seen as a case of scoring high marks and
outscoring rivals. The competitive nature of the examination system is
indirectly highlighted through the movie.
Indian
education system
The Indian education system is often
criticised for encouraging rote learning. At the same time, this rote learning
is said to benefit Indian students in subjects such as mathematics and computer
engineering. The most popular computer applications are made in the US and the
largest number of foreign workers who work in the computer engineering industry
in the US are from India. This perhaps proves that the Indian education system
is not totally without merit in advanced modern educational fields such as
computer engineering. All said and done, those leaving Indian shores for
computer engineering jobs abroad probably reflect the cream of the Indian
computer engineering education system or the Indian education system as a
whole. Rote learning in fields such as the humanities, where there is perhaps
less focus on memorisation and reproduction at the higher education level and
where open-book examinations are not much of an issue at that level, leads to a
decline in critical thinking where students independently assess matter based
on their wide reading. Rote learning encourages learning only what is
necessary. Wide reading encourages reading completely irrelevant matter because
no field of studies is an island in itself. Ultimately, all forms of human
knowledge are inter-connected.
How to align this idealistic view of
education with the ground realities of breaking free past the initial barriers
of the examination system? These two movies provide different creative takes on
overcoming such challenges. If one thinks of overcoming hand-to-mouth survival
situations, an idealistic view of livelihoods and food intake is neither
desirable nor practical. However, in a situation where a student is struggling
to pass and has lost interest in studying, an idealistic view of education may
or may not be practical. What the two movies demonstrate is that what changes
the situation is a different sense of motivation. In Nil Battey Sannata,
it is empathy for her mother which motivates Apeksha to study. In Dhh,
the motivation is provided by the hope that they can overcome the barrier of
passing examinations. None of these motivational factors is brought about by a
change of pedagogy or a change of the assessment system. Rather, the motivation
is external to the education system and is personal in nature. The intrinsic
deficits of the education system, if any, which de-motivate the students in the
first place, remain. The system does not change. The students have found a way
to work their way through the system. The fault is ascribed to the students
rather than to the system. If some students can work their way through the
system, other students also need to find a way through it. Education is then
seen as a set of exercises which needs to be completed, a game which has to be
played irrespective of whether one wants to play it or not. In Nil Battey
Sannata, there is a reward at the end of all the games—the job of an IAS
officer. In Dhh, the immediate game is all that matters as far as the plot
of the movie is concerned.
Preventing
school drop out
The latest Indian Ministry of
Education’s Education Statistics at a Glance is from 2018[1] and
the latest data in that report is from the financial year 2015-16 in some cases
and 2014-15 in other cases. So, there is an approximate six-year and sometimes
seven-year time-lag in the data available in January 2021. The report states
that the Gross Enrolment Ratio is 92.81% at the upper primary level in class 6,
80.01% at the secondary level in class 9, and 56.16% at the higher secondary
level in class 11.[2]
Thus, a large number of students are out of school.
The reasons for leaving school are
not always financial. Students drop out of school for other reasons such as
disinterest in studies because of being unable to follow lessons, problems in
going to schools physically, repeatedly failing in school examinations, mental
health issues brought about by factors other than the ones mentioned above, and
social stigma against education and which is especially applicable to girls,
among other reasons.[3]
All these students who drop out of
school spend most of their daytime with either family members or with other
students who have dropped out of school or are involved in some kind of
work. The dropped-out students who spend
most of their daytime with other dropped-out students are in a dangerous area
of juvenile existence where there is no proper guidance and there is a large
amount of association with those left behind by society. This group is
especially vulnerable to the worst forms of occupation, thought-processes and
activities that exist in society.[4] Thus,
it is important to prevent drop-outs at the school level in order to create a
better society.
The Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher
education in India is around 25%. While one may argue that higher education is
not necessary for all professions and in the deeply hierarchical society in
which we live and given the lack of number of jobs available to most graduates,
higher education for 100% of the population is not desirable as it leads to
highly-qualified graduates doing jobs which require a much lower level of
educational qualification.[5] This
is true not only for government jobs in substantive posts in the lowest scales
of pay where the pay is much higher for such jobs as compared to other such
jobs in the private unorganised sector but also of jobs in general in the
private unorganised sector where it is likely that even postgraduates are
employed in sectors where basic literacy is all that matters.
While dropping out of the education
system after completing school may be defended given the nature of our society,
being in school and completing school education is essential not only because
it may improve the nature of jobs which one may get in life but also because
the human mind is considered more vulnerable till the age of reaching adulthood
than other age groups. Therefore, a school is one of the safest places for
children to be in till reaching adulthood. Schools can also be vulnerable to
children if they are bullied or abused in school but more often than not
schools provide a safer refuge for children as compared to being outside both a
school and one’s home. It is therefore important to retain children in school
and ensure that they complete at least school education.
The two movies discussed earlier
portray attempts by the children to remain in school. Especially in the case of
Nil Battey Sannata where the student is from a much lower economic class
than the middle-class students in Dhh, the student’s mother, Chanda, and
one of her employers, discuss what will happen if Apeksha fails to clear her
class 10 examinations. Both the elderly women realise that the girl might
discontinue her studies and not complete her secondary level education if that
happens. They foresee a bleak future for the student if she fails at that
hurdle. Apeksha is cynical and thinks that the limits of a human’s potential
are circumscribed by the guardian’s class, status and profession. It is likely
that if Apeksha failed, she too would hang out with other female students who
dropped out of school. She would either be married off at an early age or she
would have to take up jobs working as a domestic help as her mother. Completing
her school education would provide Apeksha with not only better job prospects
but would also boost her confidence considerably and make her less cynical
about life.
Nil Battey Sannata also
depicts adult education where Chanda, Apeksha’s mother, also gets re-admitted
in class 10 and tries to complete her secondary level education and pass her
secondary examination. The movie does not provide any hint as to how that may
help Chanda except that it works as a motivational factor for Apeksha to
complete her education. The movie project’s Chanda’s adult education as a step
in Apeksha’s education. Chanda is not educating herself in order to improve her
own life but rather to improve the life of her daughter. The movie does not
hint as to whether Chanda’s quest for her own education will improve her own
job prospects. She was working as a domestic help who cleans and cooks in other
people’s households as well as working odd jobs in small factories or working
as a dishwasher in roadside eateries. Given the trajectory of her career so far
and her age, she may very well continue in such careers. Whether she will be
able to put her secondary level education to use to improve her career is not
hinted at in the movie.
In Dhh, the student who is
weakest at studies, Bajrang, belongs to a family where his father is
illiterate. The movie shows Bajrang fraudulently obtaining his father’s thumb
imprint on his report card. If Bajrang fails at his examinations, it may have
been that his father would have taken him out of the education system. Given
Bajrang’s young age and his precarious academic abilities, had he been taken
out of the education system, he may very well have regressed back to a state of
illiteracy or extremely poor reading and numerical abilities. As it is, the
quality of primary education in India is dire. The non-government organisation Pratham
(established in 1996) has been publishing an Annual Status of Education Report
since 2005 which carries surveys about the reading and numerical abilities of
primary school children. There is an alarmingly significant percentage of
students who have progressed to higher classes but who are not able to read or
perform numerical tasks which are considered achievable by students in much
lower standards. Bajrang’s hypothetical regression to illiteracy may have not
only hampered his job prospects but had he hung out with other school
drop-outs, it would have made his peer group a group of other children and
young adults who have been left behind by society’s progress and have been left
to fend for themselves using whatever means possible. Thus, it was imperative
for Bajrang to remain in school and complete his school education to improve
both his job prospects as well as remain in a more disciplined milieu during
his childhood years.
The
way ahead
School drop-out rates have to be
reduced. Repeatedly failing in school examinations is unlikely to decrease
school drop-out rates. Failing once in a class may be acceptable but failing
twice in the same class is a dire situation. It points to students having
completely lost pace with the teaching methodology. How to prevent that? How to
motivate students to keep pace with what is being taught? The two movies
discussed here present previously less motivated children re-motivating
themselves whereas the teaching methodology and assessment system remains
intact. Another solution is perhaps for these two external factors to change to
re-motivate students who fail to keep pace with the pedagogical system. The two
movies highlight efforts on part of the students rather than efforts on part of
the administrators of the educational system or the teachers. Taare Zameen
Par (2007) highlighted the effort on the part of teachers for re-motivating
students. However, Nil Battey Sannata and Dhh on the one hand,
and Taare Zameen Par on the other hand, highlight individual attempts at
remedying the situation. There is a lack of systemic changes involved, which
perhaps accurately reflects the lack of systemic changes in the overall
pedagogical system in India and in most other parts of the world. Syllabi
change, technology and infrastructure change but the focus on examinations and
rote learning, and the sense of detachment and disaffection that a large
section of students feel for the matter being taught to them keeps the system
more or less the same in its pedagogical technique. Experimental schools exist
in some countries where hands-on learning and a more engaged pedagogical
approach is available to students but those schools and students are far
removed from the disadvantaged systems of schools and students depicted in Nil
Battey Sannata and Dhh.
The National Education Commission of
India in the mid-1960s headed by Daulat Singh Kothari, the then chairperson of
the University Grants Commission, had recommended that India spend 6% of its
GDP on education. Fifty-five years have gone by but India has not managed to
spend more than 4.5% of its GDP on education ever. Education holds less
priority for successive governments of India. A proportionate 30% increase in
the education budget is likely to improve the education scenario for India.
However, money is not the only factor thwarting the Indian education system.
The Indian education system does not
encourage shared problem solving within the classroom. Learning from peers is
not actively encouraged. In Nil Battey Sannata, Chanda and later Apeksha
learn mathematics less from the school teacher and more from one of the other
students in class 10 who works as a car-mechanic after school-hours. However,
both Chanda and Apeksha have to learn from this boy outside the classroom.
Taking help from him within the classroom while doing assignments would be
considered cheating. Peer learning is actively discouraged within the classroom
in Indian education. Group learning is unknown. Group discussion is a fancy
keyword for rote assessment where one-upmanship is appreciated rather than the
idea of learning together. In Dhh, peer learning also takes place not
only outside the classroom but also outside the school premises. The school
premises functions more as an examination centre. The actual learning takes
place in the students’ individual houses and sometimes the students practise
learning together on the rooftop of one of the students’ houses. The
inhospitality of the Indian education system to peer learning is indicated in
both the movies.
Neither of these two movies gets a
scope to highlight how the matter the students learn in school is utilised by
the students. Relating the content to their lives is one of the ways in which
interest in education is sustained and students motivate themselves. The movies
shed no light on this as the students motivate themselves based on their idea
of passing examinations rather than learning the matter. Since each student
relates to some or other portion of the matter in his or her own way, the
education system requires active participation from students so that other
students, the teachers and most importantly a student realises how the matter
is important to the him or her. In order to facilitate this, there is need for
active discussion among the class. Class sizes need to be small and the
teacher-student ratio needs to be small to make this work in practice. Money
goes a long way in solving this problem. Instead
of frequent formal assessment and other rote work, more time should be left for
the actual learning. Frequent formal assessment, rather than measuring whether
students are keeping pace with the pedagogical system, ensures that the focus
of the system is on these assessments rather than focussing on the matter and
on other forms of learning together and mental development.
These are some of the ways in which
one may analyse the depiction of overcoming school educational challenges among
weak students in these two movies.
[1] Educational
Statistics at a Glance (2018), https://www.education.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/statistics-new/ESAG-2018.pdf. Accessed 9
January 2021.
[2] Ibid.,
pp. 49-52.
[3] Some surveys
have been conducted in this area. See Arun N.R. Kishore and K.S. Shaji, ‘School
Dropouts: Examining the Space of Reasons,’ Indian Journal of Psychological
Medicine 34(4) (2012), pp. 318-323, https://dx.doi.org/10.4103%2F0253-7176.108201 and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3662127. Accessed 9
January 2021.
[4] ‘Cops “study”
dropouts to curb crime,’ The Times of India, New Delhi edition, 16
November 2016, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Cops-study-dropouts-to-curb-crime/articleshow/55447728.cms. Accessed 9
January 2021.
[5] For example,
see ‘Over 93,000 candidates, including 3,700 PhD holders apply for peon job in
UP,’ Economic Times, 30 August 2018, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/over-93000-candidates-including-3700-phd-holders-apply-for-peon-job-in-up/articleshow/65604396.cms. Accessed 9
January 2021.
