Aarakshan

Prakash Jha treads timidly into the contentious territory of quotas in education

Whenever VP Singh, who was responsible for implementing the recommendations of the contentious Mandal Commission, spoke about reservations, he used a common metaphor of inclusiveness. He said we have to see quotas as the reasonable sharing of assets within a family. Principally, this is the argument in Aarakshan.

Since the movie looks to create consent, it deliberately avoids litigious or divisive aspects of the issue. After an honest introduction, during which the white heat generated by student activists on both sides of the reservation divide is touched upon, the film switches tamely to a drama on how money (coaching classes) is eroding our educational system and creating a parallel system of inequity, just as caste does. 

This may be true, but it is a cop-out. It’s not the subject the film sets out to address. The opening of the film is brave, and then about 45 minutes into the movie, the writer and director seem to decide that discretion is the better part of valour. ‘Reservation’ is abandoned and a melodramatic conflict between a college principal (Amitabh) and a slippery coaching class capitalist (Manoj Bajpayee) takes over.

But that first hour or so is absorbing, mainly because Bachchan is in unusually good form. He plays Dr Prabhakar Anand, principal of a private college in Bhopal, who does not need to comment on a Supreme Court order on reservations, but does. He is quoted out of context as an ardent advocate of its implementation in private colleges. This gets him into trouble with the trustees and he resigns rather than be humiliated.

He then teaches students from deprived backgrounds and does so with the same astonishing passion. Though an important work, Aarakshan is a humourless, word-heavy film. Even a romance—the relationship between a Dalit student (Saif Ali Khan) and Anand’s daughter (Deepika Padukone)—is played out like an elaborate funeral ritual.

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Ajit Duara