Uncovering the Dark Realities of Contemporary India: Chetan Bhagat's Revolution 2020 and the Plight of Youth in a Corrupt Society
Chetan Bhagat was born in New Delhi in a middle class Punjabi Family on the 22nd day of April, 1974. His father was an Army man and his mother, a government employee. The major part of his education was done at Delhi. He studied in the Army Public School, Dhaula Kuan, New Delhi during the years 1978 to 199 after which he chose to do Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. After pursuing engineering he took up a management program offered at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. Being an outstanding student, it was no wonder when he was recognized as the "Best Outgoing Student" of his batch by IIM Ahmedabad. He later got married to Anusha Suryanarayanan in 1998; she was his fellow student at IIM-A. Chetan then went to Hong Kong along with his family and worked as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs. He worked in Hong Kong for eleven years and then shifted to Mumbai and started writing. It was his passion. He has four novels against his name: Five Point Someone (2004), One Night @ The Call Center (2005), The Three Mistakes Of My Life (2008) & Two States (2009). By chance or by choice, titles of all his novels had numbers associated with them. He now leads a happy life with his wife and twin sons Ishaan and Shyam. Chetan loves to live a simple life watching cartoons with his children who wish to become super heroes. He is a health conscious person and practices yoga regularly.
Chetan Bhagat is a famous Indian author who penned down novels that hit the market with great success. All of them were bestsellers since their release and have been filmed by famous Bollywood directors. Chetan Bhagat is considered a youth icon rather than as just an author. With his vivid and humorous way of depicting stories, he has inspired reading habits in many young Indians. He is also a good columnist and writes columns for many leading newspapers. According to him, novels are entertainment tools through which he expresses his views and opinions about society and the youth. Development issues and national issues are addressed through columns. Chetan's columns are written in a way that directly points out the issues within our country and in many times it has even triggered discussions in the parliament. He is not only a good writer but also a motivational speaker and has given many motivational speeches at many colleges, organizations and companies.
Summary
Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption, Ambition (2011) is the story of the successes and failures of three young people - Gopal Mishra, Raghav Kashyap and Aarti Pradhan - in a small and traditional city called Varanasi. The subtitle of the novel is called Love, Corruption, Ambition and each word of the subtitle sticks to a specific character. Aarti is a sensitive girl and cares a lot about her love. When she knows that Raghav has no time to spare with her, she comes to Gopal, who happens to be her childhood friend. Gopal Mishra allows corruption by joining hands with MLA Shuklaji. Although he is not an engineer, he becomes the owner of engineering. Raghav Kashyap is a bright boy who clears entrance exams and is pursuing an engineering degree. However, he leaves the job offered by Infosys and takes a job as a journalist to eradicate corruption from society.
The novel begins with the author's visit to the Ganges College of Engineering in Varanasi. The author was invited to a fun talk in this college and after giving the talk he went to Gopal Mishra's house for a drink. Due to excessive drinking, Gopal Mishra, a young manager of Ganga Technical College, was seriously injured and hospitalized. When the writer went to hospital to inquire about his health, he started telling his story of broken love relationships, failure in IIT entrance exams, age old land dispute, father's ambition and struggle's school day experiences, his ship journey of Aarti, etc. His father sent him to Kota to prepare for the IIT entrance exam . There he proved worthless and returned home unsuccessful. His father died and after that Gopal was introduced to MLA Shuklaj who was a corrupt political leader. With Shuklaji's support, Gopal settled the land dispute and built a huge building and named it Ganga College of Engineering. Thus, the first story tells the story of Gopal Mishra's struggle and ambition, failure and success.
Raghav Kashyap is one important character in the novel and he performs heroic deeds to eradicate corruption from society. He is a graduate of Banaras Hindu University in Engineering. He left the Infosys offer and started working as a journalist. He was the man whose article on the Ganga scam forced Shukla to resign. Being too ambitious, Raghav neglected his girlfriend Aarti and this forced him to leave Gopal. Aarti is the only female character who wanted to be a flight attendant. She could not be a flight attendant and preferred to work as a customer service manager in a large hotel. There she met Gopal, drank and made love with him. In short, novels represent youth with social stratification. Gopal belongs to a middle-class family ruled by parental ambition. His father is a teacher who could not afford private tuition and therefore sells his land and sends his son to Kota to take the IIT entrance tests. Raghav and Aarti come from a rich and well-to-do family. Raghav's father is an engineer and he supports his son very strongly in his career. Aarti's grandfather was a politician and his father an IAS officer. Since he is an IAS, private tuition centers never pay him tuition fees. In the novel and under this love story there is a love triangle ; it is the story of eradicating corruption from Indian society. In short, the plot of the novel revolves around three young men who want to be rich regardless of moral, ethical values. Another wants to be a champion of social revolution and a third loses moral values for physical satisfaction.
Uncovering the Dark Realities of Contemporary India: Chetan Bhagat's Revolution 2020 and the Plight of Youth in a Corrupt Society
Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption, Ambition (2011), Chetan Bhagat portrays the social evils, corruption and problems of the youth generation. He illustrated the love theme with different tones and attitudes. Reading the relationship between Gopal and Aarti readers will feel that they are a good partner. But due to academic failure, Aarti leaves him and goes with the brilliant IIT student Raghav. So at the beginning of , the author shows a love triangle. As time passes, Aarti realizes that Raghav is too ambitious and has no time for her. Desperate, the woman returns to her friend Gopal from school days and has sex with him. However, Gopal feels bad and decides to help Raghav in his mission. He also realizes that Aarti is the best partner only for Raghav. Therefore, he plays a drama where a prostitute reveals her infidelity to Aarti . Finally, Aarti returns to Raghavi. Here, the author introduced the theme of platonic love in . The ambition or aspiration of youth is another important theme that the author dealt with in the novel The novel is basically about the desires of three young IIT students. Gopal wants to become a rich man. Raghav aspires to become a social reformer and an Aarti steward. Chetan Bhagat has deliberately chosen two cities - Varanasi and Kota . He wants to show that times have changed and students of Varanasi are also eager to pursue higher/technical education in Kota. Gopal Mishra comes from a middle class family. His father wants to make him an engineer and also works hard. However, Gopal is not interested in engineering. Instead, he wants to become a rich and powerful person. To fulfill his ambition, he joins hands with MLA Shuklaji and becomes rich by applying dishonest practices. Raghav Kashyap, another character in the novel , is from a wealthy and also brilliant family. He clears all the exams and becomes an engineer. However, he is not interested in working as an engineer. He quits Jobs and takes a job as a newspaper reporter. His goal is to change the world through social movements and reforms. He wants to create a corruption-free society.
His article on the Ganga cleaning scam brings some changes to the system. Aarti is the only female character in and the only person who does not fulfill her ambition to become a flight attendant . He works hard and finally changes his dream. The degradation of morals and ethical values is another theme of the novel. In What Young India Wants, Chetan Bhagat answers that the young generation has been drinking, smoking and doing illegal activities. Gopal's heavy drinking and hospitalization, Aarti's involvement in drinking and sex, and MLA Shuklaj's dishonest practices show the decay of moral and ethical values in our society.
Chetan Bhagat dealt very seriously with the issue of corruption in the novel Revolution 2020. The novel presents a picture of a dishonest society where the youth of India struggle to achieve their goals. The novel sheds light on a hot topic - corruption in education . The author criticizes the development of educational institutions into commercial centers. Gopal's journey from poor middle class to young rich shows the corruption of the education system. He observed malpractices from the beginning of land acquisition to the construction of the building and filling of acceptance quota. With the support of MLA Shukla, he kidnapped Ghanshyam's -year-old grandson and demanded to leave the land in his possession. So they forcibly acquired the land and converted agricultural lands into commercial use ie. for running an educational institution by paying bribes amounting to twelve and a half thousand rupees to sub traders. Gopal offered two lakh rupees to the head of the AICTE admission committee and 25 thousand rupees to each of the committee members. Fake demolition of illegal construction is the best example of a corruption chain. In connection with Raghav's article on illegal construction, VNN officials started demolishing the building using bulldozers. Gopal called Shuklaji and asked for help. MLA Shuklaji settled the matter by paying a bribe of rupees to the VNN authorities and organized a fake demolition work to deceive people. After all, the building was built. In addition, the administration directed school principals to recommend Ganga Tech College to their students and for this they gave a reward of ten thousand rupees per admission. Professor Shrivastav's way of evading income tax, missing lectures and getting salary, Ganga cleaning scam etc are examples that show various forms of corruption.
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