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Public authorities should not feel that their responsibility is over.

Talent showA still from “Super30”.

You seldom come across documentaries which tell you all is not bad with Bihar. Here is one. “Super30” is about a remarkable school in Patna which selects 30 young students and prepares them for entry to the Indian Institutes of Technology. Most are from low-caste backgrounds but all have a talent for mathematics. The “Super30” course is subsidised by the efforts of its founder, Anand Kumar and his teacher-colleague Abayanand, who also happens to be Bihar’s Deputy Chief of Police. Once admitted, the students pay nothing.

“I came to know about Ramanujan School of Mathematics through an article published in the Guardian newspaper. It wasn’t an easy film but my producer and I were convinced that it could be a great story,” says director Christopher Mitchell. Elaborating how the subject wasn’t easy, Mitchell explains, “See educational subjects could turn out to be boring so we decided to pick some extremely inspirational real characters from the school. We got the help from the school as it allowed us access from the initial selection in September 2006, through seven months of study and examinations, to the moment when the IIT results were announced in May this year.”

Christopher Mitchell.

Mitchell feels the story tells us that there is equitable distribution of natural talent. It is how we nurture it that makes the final outcome different. “Some of the students come from extremely disadvantaged sections of the society. We followed them to their households to capture a slice of their lives.” Mitchell shares out of 30, 29 made it to the IITs. “Only one candidate, Sushila dropped out for unknown reasons. Later I came to know she made it to some engineering college in Nepal.”

However, all is not well with the novel system. Mitchell says after the results were announced one of the students turned up at the felicitation ceremony organised by a rival school. It was alleged that he accepted bribe from them. Moral issues? “Exactly! Out of disgust Anand Kumar and Abayanand decided to close down the school. Anand said that we should have a morality test as part of the selection process. It was only after a public outcry that they decided to continue with the project.”

Mitchell feels such projects should be promoted with care, as the public authorities should not feel that their responsibility is over.

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