Director: Pratish Mehta
Writers: Puneet Batra, Pravin Yadav, Nikita Lalwani, Manish Chandwani
Cast: Mayur More, Jitendra Kumar, Ranjan Raj, Alam Khan, Ahsaas Channa, Revathi Pillai, Tillotama Shome, Rajesh Kumar
Number of episodes: 5
Streaming on: Netflix
There are two ways to process a series like Kota Factory. The first way is popular. You see it as a sweet, slice-of-life portrait. You convince yourself that, like most TVF shows, Kota Factory captures the authenticity of middle-class existence. That existence just happens to revolve around IIT aspirants in Kota, the educational hub (in)famous for its coaching centers. You admire the ‘normalization’ of a struggle that’s reduced to dark vignettes by non-fiction cinema. You appreciate the black-and-white palette, the allegorical aerial shots, the slick film-making and, of course, the feel-good characters. You believe that angels like Jeetu Bhaiya (Jitendra Kumar) – the star physics tutor and everyone’s favourite life teacher – really exist. You believe that teenage strivers like Vaibhav (Mayur More), Uday (Alam Khan) and Balmukund Meena (Ranjan Raj) enjoy the rat race. You think: Such a warm antidote to the do-or-die newspaper narratives. And you celebrate that, at the end of the day, these JEE hopefuls are ordinary kids with extraordinary goals.
The second way is unpopular. You see Kota Factory as a shifty show that sells the student struggle like a product. You note the erasure of social tensions, crippling peer pressure, suicides and desperate families. You resent the sugarcoating of psychological stress. You wonder if the slick film-making is a front for Kota’s tragedy. You wonder if the black-and-white palette is a deep visual motif or just an excuse to make the city look cinematic. You notice that there’s nothing a Jeetu Bhaiya monologue can’t fix. You realize that Jeetu Bhaiya is more of a concept than a person, a misleading advertisement for millions of students who arrive in Kota expecting super-mentors like him. You know that the show stages aspirants as ordinary kids who aren’t brainwashed by their parents and teachers at all. You notice the skewed gender dynamics and the low-stakes environment like it were just another cozy student town. You think of a corny tagline: Come, Fall in Studies. And you conclude that, at the end of the day, Kota Factory normalises a toxic system that propagates the survival of the fittest.
