A few days ago, when India celebrated its 76th Independence Day, news came of yet another Kota student suicide, the 20th this year. Kota gets disproportionate attention, with the city seen as a symbol of everything wrong with our education system. At any point, lakhs of students grind away in Kota’s various coaching classes. They hope to crack the hyper-competitive medical and engineering entrance exams, which according to many Indian parents are the safest, if not the only possible careers.
The coaching classes are expensive, which places a heavy burden on many parents. The students are aware of what the parents are doing for them, creating stress right from Day 1. Staying away from home is tough too. The coaching is intense. Cracking these 1-2% selection rate exams isn’t a cakewalk. This intensifies the stress, which comes to a boil with the entrance exam results. A selection rate of 2% means 98% of students will not make it. Are you really surprised that some of the students just crumble in this journey?
People have suggested solutions, from having spring loaded fans in Kota (really, to prevent death by hanging) to having more counsellors. While these may help, they won’t fully solve the problem. To do that, we need to have the courage to see the reality. First, we must realize this is not just a Kota phenomenon. According to the National Crime Reports Bureau (NCRB) survey, around 13,000 teens committed suicide in India in 2021. This translates to around 35 suicides a day. The suicide rate for teens in India is around 10-11 per lakh of population. Assuming Kota has around three lakh students, this would imply around 30 suicides a year if national rates are applied. Some reports do say student suicide rates in Kota are higher (at around 16/lakh population) than national averages. This could well be true given the more stressful environment.
However, student suicides are not just Kota specific, but a national issue. It is easy to blame a town far away, call all coaching classes evil and wash hands off the real problem – we do have tremendous student stress pan-India. Kota may well be where the tandoor gets extra hot, but we are skewering our students in the oven nationally anyway.
The question is, what can we really do to fix it? There’s a role for everyone – the parents, teachers, the policy makers, job recruiters and the students themselves.
For Indian parents, for heaven’s sake, please educate yourselves. Being a doctor and engineer is not the be all and end all of life. There are literally hundreds of other professions. Most doctors in India don’t even make so much money. Many engineers are unemployed. Have you ever heard of industries like real estate and finance? People in these industries can become really wealthy, and they don’t have to be a doctor or engineer. A shopkeeper, social media marketing executive, a car dealer, a hotelier, a travel industry expert, an online shop owner – all these people DO NOT have to be doctors and engineers. Nobody who works in this newspaper pubishing the article needs to be a doctor or engineer. They also live happy lives. They also get ‘rishtas’. Please stop imposing your screwed up dreams on your children. Sure, there’s nothing wrong in being a doctor or engineer. However, it is not end of the world if your child doesn’t become one. Imagine a world full of only doctors and engineers. Can you think of anything more boring?
For the teachers, they must realize how dumb and pig-headed Indian parents can be. They have to re-educate the students on how to approach these exams, not just on how to study for them. The exams are tough and they must work hard. But treat it like a challenging game. Do your best. If it happens, great. If it doesn’t, move on. Life has something better in store for you.
For policy makers, they need to see why only a few government colleges are still considered to be aspirational. This, when usually people in India prefer their products and services private. It’s because private colleges have not got the same credibility and their incentives and motives are not trusted. Maybe let foreign universities come in? Maybe make big Indian corporates affiliate with colleges? We need to increase the supply of aspirational colleges and seats.
There’s something Indian recruiters need to do as well. If you only go to elite colleges to recruit onlyengineers, you are not helping the problem. Why do you need a mechanical engineer for a sales job? Why not go to other, less elite colleges and pick good students from there. This will help make other colleges aspirational too.
For the students themselves, they must learn the bitter truth of life – life is unfair, uphill and hard. People may dole out lip-service on how student stress should be lowered and other blah blah, but nobody really cares. Nobody is coming to save you. However, the good thing is it is up to you to make your own life. Life will hit you with disasters, as it does everyone. A failure in an entrance exam may be a blow and a dream shattered but see is as practice for life to come. Failure, disappointment, and unfairness will come to you again and again. The answer to this is not to quit on life, but to change your goals, strategy and actions. Continue to hustle and work hard in a different direction. Do not think all those years of grinding for an exam went to waste if you didn’t clear the test. The hard work you did will prepare you for life. Life may have taken away an opportunity from you today, but in the long life ahead, more opportunities will come. You may be at rock-bottom today, but remember the only way from rock bottom is up.
Do not take an extreme step. Just breathe, tell yourself, ‘Well this sucks, but this too shall pass’. Then take a break, rise up again and come to fight back stronger. This time with a purpose. To show the world that you don’t need to be another boring engineer or doctor to make your mark in the world. And that is what will make this doctor-engineer-entrance-exam tyranny end. Do it for you, and for the other students to come after you.
No student deserves to reach a point when they no hope. This isn’t about Kota, this is about us. This isn’t about a child failing at an entrance exam and quitting on life, it is about us failing as a society and quitting on our responsibility to show our kids a better future.