Kota churns out maximum IITians

KOTA: Talwandi, Vigyan Nagar andJawahar Nagar aren't names that roll off people's tongues when they discuss theIT boom and global software trades. Nor would most people have heardof Bansal's Classes. But there's a high chance that many students inIITs and premier engineering colleges of India will tell you exactly where inthe dusty Rajasthan town of Kota these neighbourhoods arelocated.Welcome to coaching city. Once Rajasthan's biggestindustrial hub, Kota is now churning out the highest number of IITians in thecountry and the institutes claim that one-third of the nearly 5,000 students whocrack the JEE are groomed in Kota.No one is sure what the magic isbut everybody swears it's the best bet to an engineering degree and a passportto prosperity. And no one is sure when and how Kota transformed from a citycaught in the gloom of a declining economy in the late 1970s to a bustlingeducation hub.V K Bansal, an engineer who quit work after developinga physical handicap claims it became a boon when he opened the first coachingcentre in Kota in 1983. To his surprise the first batch from BansalClasses came out with flying colours in the IIT-JEE entrance exam.And the trend stuck. This year there were 784 successful studentswho made it to the merit list in IIT-JEE. Of these, 50 were girls. Of the first10 in the all-India merit list five belonged to Bansal Classes."Oneout of every six selected in the IIT-JEE is a Bansalite. In the first 100, thenumber of our students were 21% and below this the percentage was 20 to 21 percent while in the lower ranks the percentage was 15 per cent," said P K Goel,administrator of Bansal Classes."Our mission was topromote learning by students and faculty. Teaching was the transmission ofknowledge and it became focus of our mission. We roped in IITians to teach atour institute. The IITians were B Techs and M Techs,'' said V K Bansal."They would have got more salary by working in industrial units. Butthe idea that teaching is a noble profession was inculcated in these dedicatedmen. Learning from the IITians itself was a joy for the students,'' he said inan interview."To use a coaching analogy, we replicate exercises thatserve as workouts, and then tailor these workouts to the development needs ofthe students. "Our curriculum is tough, or as I like to say it ispleasantly fatiguing. But keep in mind, our job is to prepare students for therigours of the IIT-JEE competition."Bansal's formula was adopted bydozens within the next few years and today Kota boasts of 50 coaching instituteswith a combined annual turnover of between Rs 250 crore and Rs 300 crore. Bansalalone has a Rs 18 crore turnover.Fees range from Rs 25,000 to Rs45,000 per student annually. And with room and board thrown in the student on anaverage spends Rs 75,000 to Rs 80,000 a year. And there are on an average 30,000of them jostling for space every year.And all that shows in Kota.Not only have the swanky corporate-like centres given the city a prosperousveneer, but it has triggered a building boom of sorts with home-owners addingfloors to serve as dorms and shop-owners expanding to add restaurants and tiffinhouses.Hotels thrive on the business given by parents visiting theirsons or daughters or accompanying their children during admissionseason.And many parents, hoping to get their kids to catch theknowledge bus early, are starting to bring them for admission to schools in Kotaso that they can simultaneously attend coaching classes while preparing fortheir boards.Getting into a coaching centre isn't a cakewalk."The choice of a centre is not always yours since admissions arebased on tests and interviews and standard institutes take only the beststudents having high percentage of marks in qualifying examinations," saidAnjani Prasad Shrivastava who had accompanied his son from the steel city ofBokaro to modern India's city of dreams.