Mumbai: The wrong side of Super 30 continues good work in Thane

Students at the Thane centre of Super 30, run by the Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Social Responsibility and Leadership. Pics/Datta Kumbhar

Skimming through the final edit of his soon-to-release documentary, Abhayanand: The Cop With a Chalk, Sujit Singh says he is caught in a "moral dilemma". The subject of his film is Patna's former Director General of Police, Abhayanand. It's a project he started after much deliberation in 2017, when Patna-based educator and mathematician Anand Kumar refused to give credit to the police officer for setting up the educational programme, Super 30, the famed IIT coaching centre for the underprivileged.

The centre that was launched in 2002 caught the attention of producer-director Vikas Bahl. While his film, starring Hrithik Roshan, is already on the floors, and delves into Kumar's life, Singh decided to tell Kumar's partner's story. "I have spent the last few months travelling in and around Patna, to find out how Abhayanand was both, an efficient policeman and a passionate tutor," Singh says when we meet him at his Thane residence.

Reena Garre, chief manager of Thane's CSRL Super 30, which approached Abhayanand right after he parted ways with Kumar, says here the focus is not on getting students into IIT, but transforming their lives

But things turned turtle last month, when an investigative news report in Hindi daily Dainik Jagran, exposed how Super 30 had been fudging its IIT-JEE success rate for a decade. There were also allegations about Kumar having amassed wealth, in the garb of furthering a social cause.

Overnight, Kumar, once pronounced the messiah of the poor, was called an opportunist and scamster. For Singh, who as documentarian, hopes to accurately portray Abhayanand's story, the development has put him in a tough spot. Though the IPS officer and Kumar parted ways in 2008, the six-year association cannot be overlooked.

Then, there is the reputation of Super 30, which today, enjoys cult status, spawning an entire breed of programmes across the country, including one in Thane.

Filmmaker Sujit Singh whose film, Abhayanand: The Cop With a Chalk, is based on former Patna DGP Abhayanand

A super series
The quiet residential pocket at Ovala near Ghodbunder Road, has transformed into a centre of learning within a few years. Since 2012, the Centre for Social Responsibility and Leadership (CSRL) has been running its Super 30 coaching school, out of four bungalows, in the neighbourhood. The New Delhi headquartered NGO works in the field of education, leadership and corporate social responsibility.

Modelled on Kumar and Abhayanand's initiative, the programme helmed by CSRL director SK Shahi, has 20 centres across India, with several Indian private and state companies sponsoring the programme. Shahi doesn't deny that the germ of the idea for the project, came from Patna's Super 30. "In fact, we met Abhayanand right after he parted ways with Kumar, and asked him to conduct a presentation on the Super 30 programme, so that we could see the feasibility of running such a programme ourselves," says Delhi-based Shahi.

Kumar did not respond to mid-day's calls to discuss the charges levelled against him

Abhayanand, who retired from service in 2014 as DG home guard, and is now working as a full-time teacher, was brought on board as academic mentor, and CSRL launched its first Super 30 programme in Kanpur in 2009. With this, Patna's Super 30, which had already gained traction internationally and was also the subject of an Al Jazeera documentary, for the first time received stiff competition.

Before the brand
In a telephonic interview from Patna, Abhayanand claims that Super 30 was his brainchild. "I was first introduced to Kumar in the late 1990s by a friend, who was the editor of a daily newspaper in Patna. Kumar used to write a regular column for them. It's somewhere around then that my son and daughter were preparing for the IIT entrance exam," he says.

Abhayanand

Having coached his kids, who eventually secured admission into IIT, Abhayanand felt he could use his expertise to train underprivileged children, who did not have the resources to afford coaching schools. Abhayanand says he approached Kumar, who had been running the Ramanujan School of Mathematics (RSM), a coaching school where he exclusively taught maths. He put before him the idea to gather the best talent from marginalised sections of the country, have them stay under one roof for 10 months, get them to study together and crack the entrance test. All this, without charging them a penny. Funds to support the programme were to come from the profits made at RSM. "I wanted to take the fear of IIT out of the students, and attempt at using my methodology of conducting regular tests, and solving practice papers with them," says Abhayanand, who focussed primarily on teaching physics.

Jainesh Sinha, a Super 30 Patna student, 2006

Singh, who was previously part of Bahl's research team, claims that Kumar had a different side to the story. "He said that the idea of Super 30 came to him when a student from his coaching school, couldn't afford to pay the fees."

In the first batch, 18 students cleared the IIT-JEE. The programme picked up within a few years, with outstanding results, and a near 80 per cent success rate year on year. But, in 2006, Abhayanand, who had a day job, was appointed DG (Headquarters). "I couldn't give my best to the coaching centre. I would visit it periodically, and was still committed to it, but I had too many responsibilities at work," he says. It's around this time that Kumar, citing shortage of hands, decided to merge RSM with Super 30, which earlier had its own centre five km away from the coaching school. "The purpose with which we had started, was diluted," feels Abhayanand. Soon after, rumours of the finals results being fudged emerged.

Jainesh Sinha, a Super 30 Patna student from the 2006 batch, is today the director of a start-up in Delhi. He says, "If I remember clearly, that year, only 21 or 22 students cleared IIT. Kumar sir told the media that 26 of us had made the cut. I would call it a case of truth management. At the time, we didn't think much of it. But, we were later told that the scale of fudging had increased every year."

Abhayanand claims to have cut ties with Kumar following an award ceremony held in Mumbai in 2008, where the duo was to be felicitated, and receive prize money worth Rs 5 lakh each. While Abhayanand refused to take the cash prize, he says Kumar did not refuse. "This appears to have been the final nail in the coffin," says Singh.

While Abhayanand remained in touch with the project through CSRL, Kumar's Super 30 in Patna began to hit rough weather. Gradually, stories of fabricated numbers grew stronger. "We had been hearing of the mix-up since 2011. They showed numbers, and the media lapped it up. Nobody really asked them to produce the names of students who had cleared the exam," alleges Shahi.

The big scam
Last month, Dainik Jagran's investigation correspondent Manish Mishra ran a series of articles that claimed that only three students from Kumar's Super 30 had cleared the IIT-JEE entrance, not 26. "He claimed the number was 26 and that was grossly misleading," says Mishra, who decided to pursue the story after Kumar's right-hand man, Jitendra Kumar, who worked in his institute, was held for his involvement in circulating fake social media posts against Abhayanand, accusing him of minting Rs 600 crore. "Kumar had come out in defence of Jitendra and even created a ruckus in the police station after he was arrested. I decided it was time to find out the true story," says Mishra, in a telephonic chat from Kanpur.

Mishra's investigative series revealed multiple discrepancies. According to his report, students enrolling for the programme were asked to join RSM first, after paying a hefty fee, if they wished to have any chance of making it to the final Super 30. RSM, the report alleged, earned at least Rs 1 crore annually. Mishra also revealed that Kumar's mother Jayantidevi, brother Pranav and wife Ritu, had several properties registered in their name. "Until GST was introduced in 2016, Kumar's coaching school had also evaded service tax. It was only two years ago that he floated a company [Edulit Solutions Pvt Ltd] and students at RSM were given a receipt under this company's name, and were charged GST against their fee," Mishra alleged. Kumar did not respond to mid-day's calls to discuss the charges levelled against him.

Future forward
Patna-based high court advocate Manibhushan Pratap Sengar recently filed a PIL against Kumar, after Dainik Jagran's expose. "I have not made any allegations against him. The PIL has been filed solely on the basis of the investigative reports," he told mid-day. "Anand Kumar was not only the face of Super 30, but his programme had also earned him international fame. Young students looked up to him, he was their idol. I want the truth to emerge, and have demanded a CBI inquiry into the matter."

Meanwhile, former students continue to praise Kumar. "We are grateful to Kumar sir for having paved a path for us, when we did not have the financial support to build on our dreams. What has recently unfolded is unfortunate, and should not have happened," says Sinha. Abhayanand agrees. "What happened was that the gap between reality and delivery got wider each year. Anand was obsessed with the idea of getting 30 out of 30. He forgot that he wasn't PC Sorcar. The lives of children were at stake."
Reena Garre, chief manager of Thane's CSRL Super 30 says their project officers reach out to schools across 33 districts of Maharashtra. "Our focus is not on getting students into IIT, as much as it's to reach out to deserving students in the remotest areas, and transform their lives." Last year, they saw two batches of 30 students each, of which 14 cleared the IIT-JEE. "But we managed to place 42 other students into NIIT and other government colleges."

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