This weekend saw the cinema halls in India and abroad having a successful opening of the Bollywood movie “Super 30”. It tells us the story of Anand Kumar; a genius mathematician turned teacher who started a program called Super 30 where he provides free entrance coaching to poor children to the IITs in India.
The Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs) are India’s Ivy League Institutions for technical education. Every year more than five hundred thousand students apply for less than ten thousand seats that are available in seventeen institutions.
The percent of students accepted every year is less than two percent. It is interesting to note that even Harvard’s acceptance rate is nearly six percent.
Due to this, many children start their coaching even before they have completed their tenth board exams. Needless to say, the coaching industry makes an incredible amount of money from the aspirants. It is only the economically well off ( middle class and above) who can afford these services.
Education which is supposed to be the great equalizer once again has created a system which leaves behind the economically backward.
It is into this situation the hero of our real-life story Mr. Anad Kumar steps in.
Genesys of Super 30
Anand Kumar is a mathematician par brilliance. While doing his undergraduate studies in Bihar, India his paper on number theory was published in international journals like “The Mathematical Spectrum” and “The Mathematical Gazette.” As a result, he was offered an opportunity to do higher studies at Cambridge University in the early 1990s.
Unfortunately, as he came from an impoverished economic background, his family could not afford even his tickets to the UK.
He started making a living by providing tuition in mathematics. His institute named the “Ramanujam School of Mathematics” became very popular in a short duration.
In the year 2000, a poor student approached him for coaching to the IIT-JEE examinations. As the child was from a very poor background, he could not afford to pay the fees for coaching. This led to Anand Kumar creating the program “Super 30”, a non-profit coaching institute in Patna, Bihar.
Under this program, he selected thirty meritorious students from impecunious families and provided them free coaching for a year.
He offered them hostel accommodation and food.
In the year 2017, all the thirty students he coached cleared the entrance examination to IITs.
Accolades for Super 30, the Institute
Anand and Super 30 continue to be driven by a commitment that a talented child should not be denied a chance to achieve his/her dream only because of lack of money.
His story had been covered by BBC, Discovery Channel, The New York Times, etc. He was invited as a speaker to Standford University and other premier institutes worldwide.
In 2010, Times Magazine included Super 30 in the Best of Asia list. Mr. Kumar has received various recognitions at the state and national level.
Challenges of the “real” hero
The superstar of Bollywood Hrithik Roshan portrays Anand Kumar in this biographical film named after his school. We are taken through the trials and tribulations of Kumar’s life in this Hindi movie.
The “education mafia” is reported to have run smear campaigns to bring down the popularity of “Super 30”, the institute. Mr. Kumar and his brother, who manages the institute continues to receive threats to their life.
As Kumar does not accept sponsorship or funds for the Super 30 program, managing with meager resources also continue to be a challenge.
In addition to all these problems, Anand has recently confirmed in an interview that he is diagnosed with a brain tumor, and he is undergoing treatment for the same.
In conclusion
The movie shines a torch on all that is wrong with society today. Thanks to a system where entrance tests are cleared basis the quality of coaching given to students after their class 10 exams, what chance does a student whose father is a sweeper have?
Education continues to be a problem the world over. As the recent report by UNESCO says, more than two hundred and fifty million children worldwide will still not have access to schools by 2030.
