Let me make this clear to you, articleship does not solely mean to give a to-be-CA a first hand experience of how things work at a CA firm, but also to provide CAs cheap work force. So find an alternate to this, and then you can suggest ways how to learn the tricks of the trade. ICAI/ CAs might not explicitly say this, but this is an implicit truth.
Problems are because of some Principals/ Trainees, and in any work place, one can have that can kind of bosses and employees.
Big-Fours have a better way to handle things, provide initial training, have perks, but of course they might drain your out and make you specialise in one area, at this stage I would recommend to have a bit of as many things possible, helps in exams.. And by the way, a lot of non-big four firms are good and handle big assignments..
You may read Business Today, February 22, 2009 edition which has a cover story on auditing, some interesting stuff.
https://businesstoday.intoday.in/bt/issue/47/1/
I can't assure you whether you can learn something in articleship which maybe useful to you in future, but can surely assure you that you can't learn everything in articleship, which will be useful to you in future, whether you are in job or in practice.
You will still miss out a lot of areas, which you might not require to look into and you might not even bother about it. However, if you wish to, you may have to join another firm as a paid staff (after articleship) or ask your seniors to allocate work in those areas (if they agree) and/ or as an associate in same or another firm. You can never learn everything!
Regarding the compulsory 2-3 month course yearly, you think and suggest, you can't compile and explain all the possible situations one may face in real life.. Like they explain how to audit in books, what SAs to follow, etc.. but, do they explain how hard it can be to get through some stubborn people during audit?? How you can get facts and information from people? How can you find contradictory records?
You can't resign as an auditor, as it would be yours boss's decision to stay on it, you just get scolded by your boss and also hear nonsense from the auditee. In tax, Mr. V.K. Singhania may give you a lot of income tax cases to study, but still there are a plenty peculiar situations to see.
All the more ICAI had troubles providing facilities for IT training only and may even still be having.. you can't expect them to provide more training.. And, as I mentioned one doesn't know what the future holds (practice/ service/ sector) for you, so 2 months additional articleship training is worthless, at least in my opinion.
For most cases, initially it is real fun and interesting in articleship, but just like marginal utility, slowly it gets annoying, irritating and you just want to be out of it.. Of course, you may have a different experience all in all.
It won't be like, you won't learn anything, you will as you are an empty vessel right now, anything will be good!
What I say, try to learn as much during initial days, as they're very interesting initially, as you won't get much responsibilities and you can always blame your seniors for not telling you. ;)
Take this as an opportunity of a lifetime, to learn and play with things yet not be held responsible for it.. When you are a CA there's a sword always hanging on your neck..
Once you have suffered through articleship, i.e. completed it ;), then ask yourself whether there should be an alternate? You might come up with an answer, when I've gone through such troubles, the new kids too should.. yeahhhh...
Hope you've chosen a firm which will be good for you, wish you luck for your results.