This is in response to an article by Sagarika Ghose

First of, after reading all goodie goodie stuff about this movie, I am glad to read a different opinion. However, I find it to be a one-way analysis of the movie. I think Sagarika Ghose has got it incorrect. The movie doesn’t say “Don’t Study”, it says “Do what you love to”. If she thinks a movie, however powerful it is, can make India a nation of idiots, her entire career as a journalist understanding India has gone for a toss.

Many of us have not been part of those “elite schools – the IITs,IIMs, AIIMS, NIFTs, Design, Mass media and Architecture schools”, and have seen first hand, how rote learning in our regular engineering, science or arts colleges diminish our ability to learn the subject, whereas creativity and innovation go for a bounce.

We have seen the effects of complying to what teachers say as god’s word and textbooks as religious scriptures. They suppressed our ability to question and stand on our own. Remember the hysteria of writing the incorrect year for a historical event because our faulty text book said so. We did that to get marks, we killed factual truth to obtain success.

Those elite schools I mentioned above are certainly better off then the rest of the system, but if 3 idiots is a reflection on our larger education system, it has certainly struck a point. After all in a democracy, “masses are always right”.

Of course Rancho is a super human, but that is what most Indian movies are about “escapism”, and we love escapism, so that we can get back to the grind of our daily reality refueled with more determination.

The bigger message of the movie was “Purse excellence, Success will follow”. It doesn’t say pressure is bad, but one that leads to student suicide is certainly not worth it, wherever it comes from. Student suicide rates are way too high in India. Though this is also a problem in East Asia (South Korea and Japan especially).

Our target should be to develop as a nation, coz once we reduce poverty and inequity, population is under control and in harmony with nature, we will be able to say “Alll izzz well”