Chetan Bhagat’s novel is not as the title suggests about the revolution.
It is story of a love triangle, set in the period of engineering entrance exams in varanasi.
Gopal, the narrator and a son of a poor school teacher, gets into trouble when he first time meets Aarti, the main female character. He steals from her lunch box on the first day of his school in class five and Aarti complains to the teacher. He apologizes to her, and after that they become good friends. Well into their teens now, Gopal realises that he loves Aarti. He tells her, but she does accept it as he wished.
Meanwhile, Gopal and his friend Raghav are both preparing for engineering entrance exam, though neither really wants to become an engineer. Raghav wants to be a journalist while Gopal just wants to be rich oneday. The former gets into Banaras Hindu University. Gopal on the other hand does not score really good to make it in to a decent engineering college and his ailing, out of work father borrows money to send him to take coaching classes in Kota. When he returns to Varanasi after one year he came to know that Aarti is dating Raghav.
After failing to get admission in a good engineering college, Gopal, with the help of the corrupt MLA starts his own engineering college on his father’s farm land. Raghav who graduates as an engineer take a job as a reporter of a local newspaper. Gopal, now a corrupt director of an engineering college, is pitted against Raghav, a idealistic reporter who wants to bring a social revolution by the year 2020.
Revolution 2020 offer a glimpse into the entrance exam coaching classes racket, how money is made of gullible hopefulls and how so many private colleges have mushroomed a number of them on farm land all over India from the last decades.
In this writing the dialouges are cheesy, probably because they are directly translated from Hindi. As an example "Love is what your parents give you if you clear the IIT exam" and "As I tried to escape, one of Shri Ganesh’s goons pushed me. I fell face down.blood covered one side of my face. Sweat drops appeared on my forehead. I had finally given my blood and sweat to studies."
Gopal, Raghav and Aarti are caricatures. Gopal, the poor little dumb boy become a college director. Raghav, a talented smart engineer become a journalist with a heart of gold. Then Aarti, the pretty girl of an army man falls for idealist and when he is broke, realises she always loved the engineering college director. The only one thing that make this book readable the fast paced story. This book is stuffed with scandal, sex and corruption as a pot boiler should be.