JEE Is Not the Crown—It’s Just a Gate. Tamil Nadu, Wake Up.

Tamil Nadu has always been the education state. Parents here don’t sleep till their kids get marks. And now? 448 government school students cracked JEE Mains. Headlines scream: "Govt schools win!"  

But hold on—why are we celebrating a test that doesn’t even ask: "Can you fix a leaking tank in a village?" Or "How do you grow rice with half the water?"  

JEE is a filter. A cruel, narrow one. It rewards memory, speed, and money—yes, money. Coaching classes cost more than a year’s school fees. Yet we act like clearing it means you’re smart, you’re done, you’re elite.  

That’s the lie.  

True education isn’t a rank. It’s the kid in Tiruvannamalai who builds a solar-powered lantern from scrap because the power cuts hit his grandma’s dialysis. Or the girl in Ranipet who designs a cheap filter for arsenic in groundwater—because no one else did.  

Tamil Nadu’s real pride isn’t JEE scores. It’s the quiet labs in government schools where kids tinker with local problems—floods, soil erosion, waste, hunger. That’s innovation. That’s courage. That’s what keeps villages alive.  

So stop clapping for percentiles. Stop calling them "success stories" just because they beat a cutoff.  

The real benchmark? How many government-school kids are now solving what no IIT grad ever bothered with.  

Because education isn’t about getting in—it's about getting out and fixing what’s broken.  

JEE? Just a door.  

Tamil Nadu? Let’s start walking through the ones we build ourselves.