The fatal flaws of a coaching factory

Famous for its coaching centres, Kota is fast gaining notoriety for its alarming rise in student suicides. The recent suicide of 18-year-old Valmiki Jangid from Gaya has once again cast a spotlight on this hub of entrance exam coaching. Distressingly, this year alone, 22 students have already committed suicide in Kota.

Students from all over the country come to Kota, driven by aspirations to crack the demanding JEE and NEET examinations. Away from their families, many of these students grapple with stress and loneliness and even develop suicidal tendencies. Paradoxically, parents, expected to nurture their child's confidence, often end up exerting overwhelming pressure. They push their children into conforming to market-defined ideals of ‘success’ in a hyper-competitive world.

A closer look at the crisis reveals a troubling reality: education, a holistic pursuit of human betterment, has been reduced to a market-driven commodity, focusing solely on profit-oriented, technical education to produce mere resources to fulfil its growing demands. This one-dimensional approach, coupled with the dwindling importance of the liberal arts and humanistic traditions, has further intensified the dehumanising race for success.

The surge in suicides compels us to reflect on the deeply flawed educational system, which places unrealistic and unjust expectations on students, leaving them with little room to grow. The rote-memorization-centred learning for standardised tests lacks life skills and stifles creative fulfilment. The cycle of mock tests, constant drills, and endless comparisons takes a heavy toll without fostering psychic and moral development.

The coaching business refuses to reflect on the increasing number of student suicides. Rather than addressing the root cause of the problem, the suicide-committing aspirant is seen as weak, problematic, and unworthy or incapable of the highly challenging ecosystem. Suicide notes reveal a common disillusionment where the primary reason for suicide is the inability to keep up with expectations and the fear of a bleak future amid hypercompetition. Students feel immensely pressured when they are unable to cope, and what adds to it is the realisation that the inability to crack the competitive examinations may further distress their parents, who may have mortgaged property or taken loans for their education. The financial strain intensifies if he or she is unable to clear the examination in the initial attempts.

It is undeniable that Kota prospers at the cost of innumerable childhoods. The coaching business transforms a teenager into a ‘living’ machine compelled to ‘work’ day and night for ‘success’. Suicides among students in Kota highlight the pathology of the torturous, inhumane, and insensitive educational machinery.

Day after day, the machinery seems to propel its wheels as if nothing has happened, treating all those who ‘died’ as lacking individual will, capability, or potential and having to do nothing with the efficiency of the system in general. It seems like the town is prospering at the cost of the childhoods of lakhs of children who are living a life of dread and defeat.

The growing number of student suicides in Kota compels us to ask whether the tragedy is merely personal or reflective of the failure of the national educational imagination. It seems that a significant population of young people is being pushed to the margins of depression and suicide and being made to feel worthless due to their lack of aptitude for rote-mechanical learning by a proliferating examination business and the lack of public action. Private investment and the involvement of large-scale multinational corporations make the coaching centre-competitive examination business lucrative and highly rewarding, but at the cost of the lives of lakhs of young people who face the threat of burnout, lost confidence, depression, and even suicide. As billboards in towns and cities boast of the achievements of the minuscule number of ‘successful’ candidates, it is at the cost of lakhs of ‘failures, who were shunned to the dark chambers of anonymity, depression, and social stigma. The entire examination-coaching machinery represents a deeply problematic and bloody tale. If, as guardians, educators, policymakers, and concerned citizens, we do not realise the magnanimity and scale of this crisis, we shall not be able to forgive ourselves.

(The writer is co-founder of Shiksha Swaraj Learning Centre, Patna)