Study Pressure Toll

In Kota, the country’s coaching capital, the intensive cramming regimen is throwing a longer shadow. After a dip in 2017 when student suicides were down to 7, the toll in 2018 was 19, the highest in five years. In the last week of December beginning from Christmas, 3 students in 4 days ended their lives. This brought to 77 the number of student suicides since 2013 in this Rajasthan town where coaching is estimated to be a Rs 2,000 crore industry. About 1,50,000 students from all over the country go every year to Kota to seek admission in its 40-odd coaching centres; in turn, many of these centres have opened branches in other States, including Assam. This town boasts of a high success rate of students cracking the engineering entrance (particularly the gruelling, 2-stage IIT-JEE) and medical entrance tests every year. Their success comes after intense study for 14-16 hours daily stretched over 2-4 years, a punishing schedule that could daunt a world class athlete. About half of those who make the IIT grade claim they did it through rigorous self-study of prescribed NCERT text books and carefully selected reference books. But most IIT aspirants (and their guardians) believe coaching is indispensable. The reason is not far to seek. The IIT entrance test may have become a 2-stage affair (mains and advanced) some years back, but it is still a test of high level problem solving abilities in mathematics, physics and chemistry. While problems are never repeated, top coaching centres have built up enormous banks of problems, figured out how these are constructed and worked out quick lines of solution. Top faculties, a sizeable number of them former IITians, who could be paid anything like Rs 2-8 lakh per month, teach students how to ‘see through’ complicated problems in a jiffy and employ various number crunching tricks. No wonder guardians are willing to shell out sums like Rs 2-3 lakh as yearly coaching fees, not to speak of lodging expenses that could be even larger, so as to ensure that their wards are up-to-date with such skills. While such skills can be acquired (though not equally well by all), the IIT-JEE happens to be arguably the toughest elimination test in the world. If some 13 lakh aspirants are sitting for the mains, only around 1.5 lakh go on to the advanced stage to compete for 15 thousand or so seats. What is more, the questions are getting tougher to select from higher secondary students intensively coached in college level material.

Considering the tremendous pressure, some people would argue that 77 student suicides in a town like Kota can only be expected in a country, where every hour one student on average takes his/her life. But some educationists and counsellors beg to differ. The larger problem of youths in India unable to cope with failure in examinations and careers, in the absence of social support and mental healthcare infrastructure — is sharpened manifold within a system where students are tested in a narrow band of quantitative abilities. It has been pointed out that globally top ranking institutions like MIT and Caltech in US admit students after standardised tests like scholastic aptitude test (SAT) which demand a much wider set of skills. There is a school of thought which argues that keeping aspirants narrowly focused on problem solving skills — to the exclusion of other academic, social and soft skills — is detrimental to their broader intellectual development during formative years. When other problems are piled atop this — lack of interest, feelings of inferiority in extremely competitive environment, stress of living alone, parental pressure, guilty feelings for huge financial burden on parents, love affairs and substance abuse could push a susceptible aspirant over the edge. Such tragic outcomes have been documented and analysed in a few studies, prompting the Kota district administration to issue guidelines to help release pressure, like fee refunds, appointing counsellors and mentors, help-lines, weekly offs, indoor playing areas, yoga classes and in-house recreation facilities. But monitoring and follow-up does not happen regularly, so things go back to square one. It does not help matters that coaching centres are locked in cut-throat competition to attract and groom potential toppers; the negative fallout is that students considered less capable are segregated in batches and allegedly given lesser attention while charged higher fees. This has a bad effect on students’ morale, leaving them struggling to catch up with the leaders and throwing them into suicidal depression. Ironically, Kota’s history itself is a testimony to the never-say-die spirit that can turn failure into success. Once an industrial town that saw one industry after the other fail in the Eighties, Kota’s turnaround began when some of its jobless engineers began coaching youngsters to get into IITs. An entire economy has grown around the coaching centres — shops, hostels, transporters, security agencies and various service providers are thriving there. Such are the life lessons of enduring, surviving and ultimately prevailing. The trick is to devise a learning path that does not blind the young to such lessons while they aim for the stars.