Revolution 2020

• The word revolution comes from the Latin word ‘ revolvere’. It means a change in the way a country is governed, usually by a different political system and often using violence and war.

"This novel is X- Ray image of our Political and Education system."

• In this novel we find satire on politics and education system. We can say that novel has the plot of education system and politics.

• One of the most famous popular writer  Chetan Bhagat writes so many novels, . " Revolution 2020" is  written by Chetan Bhagat.

•  The story revolves around the narrator Gopal as he shares his experiences with the author.As usual, this time as well the names of the main characters have been taken from Hindu mythology.

• Revolution-2020 happens in three stages in Chetan Bhagat’s novel and is listed as love, ambition and corruption in the novel of Revolution-2020.  All these three stages are played by Gopal, Aarti and Raghav –characters in the novel.Gopal, Raghav and Aarti have their own ambition in life. Gopal wants to be a rich man, Raghav wants to change the world and Aarti  wants to become  an air hostess.

• The story is about Gopal’s consistent failures to crack an entrance exam which would help him a clean entry in an IIT. He loves a girl Aarti, who considers him just as a best friend and is in love with Gopal’s childhood friendRaghav. Gopal tries to propose Aarti on many occasions but every time Aarti forbids him to do so.

"Imagine every Sadhu and priest in Varanasi more than all their devotion put together, that’s how much I loved her."

• These lines of Gopal reminds the lines of Hamlet, where Hamlet explains his love for Ophelia beyond any match.

“I loved Ophelia, forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.”

• Gopal, the son of a retired school teacher, ridden with debt and litigation was bound to fall head first and hard in love with the daughter of the District Magistrate from the importunate day he decided to steal a slab of the chocolate cake; she had brought in her tiffin box for lunch. The unmatched friendship, between rich and poor like Bollywood movies.
• Character wise Aarti is not unlike the female characters of the real society , who very easily compromise with the situation . Aarti, the insecure one, gropes for the possibilities. Her character and her dealing with Raghav and Gopal remind the Eighteenth century woman's.

• After the failure in getting through JEE and AIEEE exams, Gopal is forced  by his  father  to  repeat  the exam  next year.  For  that  reason, Gopal was forced to stay at Kota,the Gateway of JEE and AIEEE.

• Chetan Bhagat describes the life of a struggling student in Kota, where initial few days are like hell before the final settlement at the place.  The search for coaching centers, lodging and boarding, the kind of students who land at Kota, everything, have been described by Chetan Bhagat with minute detail. He includes the name of the maximum possible number of cities in this book. Raipur, Bhopal, Lucknow,  Varanasi, Indore, Kota, Allahabad and the names of other cities come every now and then in the pages of the novel.

"We don’t have a home we are like people stuck in outer space. No home, no school, no college, no body only Kota.”

•  And in Kota, People have no other consideration; it is a mad race. Either one is in or out.  The writer gives words to a very realistic  sentiments  of youth.

• The name and description of the Kota city as almost every students in India studying in class 10th  must have pondered over going to Kota and thousands of students physically stay there to crack Medical  and  Engineering  entrance  exam.

• As the plot of the novel takes Gopal, Raghav and Aarti to the depths of desperation, love, ambition and crushing disappointment; the novelist very realistically tries to reflect the state of India’s private education that is not just the lifeblood but sometimes the only hope for millions of students from small town and villages turning their bright eyes at an assured and uplifting future.

• Raghav becomes a celebrity in the town after he passes the Indian Institute of Technology entrance exam. Aarti falls for Raghav during Gopal's absence. Aarti and Gopal chat online, and Aarti reveals her relationship to Gopal, who is heartbroken. 

• Gopal is contacted by a politician who wishes to build an engineering college on the highly valuable land that Gopal's family owns. Gopal agrees to the deal, and joins the system of corruption in India in order to build the college with the politician's black money. He is tired of "giving white envelopes" to officials but has no other choice.

• Revolution 2020’  can be seen as an attempt to bring to the fore the inherent corruption rooted in India’s education system and to bring out  the  anomaly  of  non-profit  organizations  and  commercialization of education.  The role of politicians who are not very literate but still  holds  the  courage  of opening  an  insatiate  of higher  education has  been comically  depicted  by  the  author. Shuklaji,  the MLA  said,

"If we had a straightforward and clean system, these professors would open their own colleges, blue chip compares and software firms could open college. The system is twisted; they don’t want to touch it, that is where we come in.”

• Raghav, now a journalist, exposes the corruption-funded college and is eventually fired from the newshouse. Raghav starts his own newspaper, Revolution 2020, to "change the world" and expose the corrupt system in India. 

• How Gopal chooses corruption as an aid to become a successful person while Raghav tries to change the world with his revolutionary ideals is what the middle pages of the book are all about.

• In the ending, things kind of change though, and you will be left ,Hindu mythology to yourself to wonder who is right and who is wrong. Except for a faint hint in the end, Chetan bhagat  doesn’t really judge what Gopal does is good or bad.But he  try to focus on the education system and politics of India. 

• The story again revolves around IIT’s, characters taken from, a love story with a sacrifice towards the end, there hardly seems to be any revolution.

• Chetan Bhagat is the favourite author of the youth.The reason being, he writes mostly in a simple, easily understandable and particularly the language of the youth- which is partly informal, abusive and trendy. He cannot lose his place in the minds of the young people and it would not be an easy task for another contemporary novelist to beat Chetan Bhagat.

• He points out the problems such as corporate life style, modern education system, misunderstanding among each other, corruption, exploitation, patriarchal setup, globalization, and social as well as personal problems in these novels. Bhagat had tried to solve this problem through his character; in Revolution 2020 its Raghav’s words.

Thank you ..........................................