Why Cheat India - Movie Review

Emraan Hashmi’s class act will take you by surprise!
Film :  Why Cheat India
Cast :  Emraan Hashmi, Shreya Dhanwanthary
Director :  Soumik Sen

The film features Hashmi as an education agent or sorts, who ropes in toppers to write entrance exam papers of influential or undeserving in exchange for money. The film takes a startling look at the state of education in India. The movie is produced by T-Series Films, Ellipsis Entertainment, and Emraan Hashmi Films.

Social educational satirical drama aims to questions the virtues of the education system, the parallel eco-system that drives money and undeserving students into the mainstream, and mostly our own shortcomings. It is a brave, unapologetic entertainment film that will keep you on the edge of the seat.

Emraan Hashmi as Rakesh Singh aka Rocky is a silver-tongued educational broker in Uttar Pradesh with an underbelly livelihood. He ropes in brilliant students from small towns and masquerades them as well-off but weak engineering or banking aspirants, and make them write competitive tests. In turn, he siphons money from the rich parents, while paying the poor students a share of the fee.

During his early operations, Emraan meets Sattu, a young engineering aspirant from a middle-class family who gets a high ranking in the competitive exam. Rocky lures him with the promise of big money, and soon, Sattu becomes his star performer, writing tests for many rich kids and earning enough money for himself.

Sattu’s elder sister (Shreya Dhanwanthary) falls for Rakesh, not knowing he is married. Everything was going according to plan until some parents who felt cheated tried to get Rakesh arrested.

In the meantime, the pressure of living a double life and always looking over his shoulder, Sattu, gets into drugs and the whole can of worm opens up in Rakesh Singh’s perfect life. As he manages to get in and out of new messes in his life taken care of is what the rest of Why Cheat India all about.

Why Cheat India also exposes the nexus of how middlemen and coaching classes enjoy exploiting the weaker students and their parents with the assurance of seats. With the involvement of politicians, educational institutions and even police officials, it makes for a scary thought as to how easy it is for undeserving students to get a seat on merit when a deserving one just lost another year due to this.

Debutante Shreya Dhawanthary is the surprise package of the film, charming us with her girl-next-door persona who has a couple of secrets hidden in her sleeves. She is quite natural and convincingly pulls off a very crucial scene in the second half of the film.

I think the film deserves applause and appreciation for pointing out some major gaping holes in the education system.