No place for second best in WINNERS’ KOTA

Competition is fierce, positions are fluid and the stress high, Mudita Girotra finds on a visit to India’s coaching capital

It’s late evening in Kota’s Indraprastha Industrial Area and scores of teens have descended on the chai and food shops after signing out of their institutes. After a 12-hour “workday”, they are still wearing their uniforms. While some are bantering, others seem eager to get back to their hostels to rest before another gruelling day.

They look tired, but are they burnt out? That’s what we had hoped to find out after Kota reported its 19th student suicide early this month. News of the 20th reached us as we started for Kota from Jaipur on Wednesday the 16th.
Over the next three days we interviewed students, teachers, institute owners, counsellors and police officers in Kota to understand why more than 100 students have killed themselves in the city over the past 10 years. It turns out there is no easy answer, no obvious villain.
City Of Hope For Many
Rupesh Gupta is a 16-year-old IIT aspirant from Balrampur in UP. He says he simply followed his successful cousins to Kota. Krishu Agarwal, a class 11 student from Ranchi, did the same. His cousins made it to IIT via Kota, so Krishu spends seven hours studying on his own after five hours of classes at his institute. He admits he feels stressed at times. “Then I video call my parents, hang out with friends, or take a nap. That’s how I handle stress,” he says.

At one of Kota’s prominent institutes we meet Suraj Kumar from Muzaffarpur, Bihar. He’s slept for only five hours and it shows in his eyes. But he’s sunk in a couch surrounded by his books and notebooks. “I study for around 12 hours a day… Yes, it is hectic but it is a matter of five months. For the next five months I don’t care if I sleep well or not, eat well or not,” says the 19-year-old who landed a seat in engineering last year but won’t settle for anything less than IIT. “I have to go to the best institute in the country.”

After classes, Suraj hangs out at the institute to study with friends. Then he studies alone till 1.30am and sleeps by 2am only to be up again at 7. How does he deal with stress? “I study even harder when I am stressed.” It’s an awkward question to ask but can he identify with the students who killed themselves? “I will pack my bags and go home if such a thought strikes me ever,” Suraj says.
Emotionally Fragile Age
In Kota, students are burdened with bigger syllabi and frequent tests at an age when they are still emotionally fragile. Most of them move to Kota in class 11, but some, like Ridhi Patil from Maharashtra, join in class 9.
“I had been hearing the success stories of Kota since class 5. I was sceptical but made up my mind to come here with my parents’ encouragement,” Ridhi says. She found the curriculum was far tougher than a normal school’s. The students have to cover 30% of the syllabus for classes 11 and 12 in classes 9 and 10.
‘Pressure, What Pressure?’
Kulbeer Singh is an aspiring doctor from Udaipur, Rajasthan. He says coming to Kota was his own choice. “I came here for better teachers. They bring out good results.” Are the teachers supportive? Yes, says the class 12 student. If the environment is supportive, why have 20 students ended their lives this year? Experts say a combination of parental expectations, academic stress and Kota’s intensely competitive environment is to blame.
But Kirti Singh Songara, vice president, operations at Resonance coaching institute, disagrees. “Where is the pressure?” she says. “Five hours of study is enough. If five hours is pressure, then don’t study. I don’t understand why people keep saying ‘pressure’ while in reality there is none.”

Dinesh Jain, regional head of business at the well-known online platform Physics Wallah, has a different view. “Kota has pressure,” he admits. “Some can cope. Some can’t… In one case, the child had pressure from home. He wasn’t scoring well in tests.” But he also says every student suicide is not due to academic pressure. In one case early this year “the student took his own life due to issues in a love affair”.
Finding Support Is Crucial
Whatever the pressure, at their age the children need family and friends to withstand it. Anya Mahajan, a NEET aspirant from Mandi in Himachal Pradesh, says she turns to her mother for comfort every time: “Only parents can lift us up and keep us motivated.” Some of Kota’s hostels now allow mothers to stay with their children.

Increasingly, families have started buying apartments in the city to provide their children with better educational opportunities. In most cases, the mother moves to Kota while the father continues working back home.
Anya also says friends help her decompress. “Kota is very competitive and self-doubt is common here. Every group has one friend who’s troubled by it more than the others. I am that friend in my group. My friends support me and calm me.”

But 19-year-old Deepak Mishra, another NEET aspirant from Madhubani, Bihar, says, “How do you make friends here? There is hardly any time to study after taking four long classes. Where is the question of interacting with others? I live alone in a room nearby.” Deepak moved to Kota this year to prepare for his second NEET attempt. “Kota feels more intense than my hometown. The competition is stiffer,” he says.
Serious About Suicides Now
They might deny the students are under pressure but Kota’s coaching institutes cannot dismiss suicides lightly. Every death dents their collective image. That’s why the major institutes have brought psychologists and counsellors on board. Sometimes, when the counsellors detect a child with worrying levels of stress, they send them home. “We have a chief psychologist with a dedicated team of 62 people, including 32 experienced psychologists and counsellors,” Allen Institute, which has 1.25 lakh students, told TOI in an email interview, adding, “We are already in the process of expanding this team to 150 individuals, including 60-plus psychologists.”

The institutes are also devoting some attention to relaxation through yoga and recreation through table tennis, carrom, etc.

Since most suicides are by hanging, hostels have started installing collapsible ceiling fan rods. “The rod cannot support more than 10-12kg weight. The spring connected to it will stretch if someone tries to hang anything on it,” Pradeep Gautam, a hostel owner, told TOI.

Hostels also have nylon meshes to catch anyone jumping off a higher floor, and the swankier ones now use biometric access technology to enforce their night curfew – 8pm for girls and 10pm for boys. A screen at the reception shows who all have punched in. The absentees’ parents get an alert on their phones.