The news that three students drowned earlier this week has reignited the debate over these structures. Young people across India live in overcrowded classrooms and dormitories and must study for up to 18 hours a day to pass public examinations or entrance exams for top universities. A business at the expense of families and where young people bear all the pressure. The number of suicides in recent years has forced the government to intervene.
New Delhi () – The deaths of three Indian students in an exam preparation centre due to a flood have reignited the debate on these structures. They are increasingly in demand, although safety regulations and the protection of the health (including mental health) of students often take a backseat.
Shreya Yadav, Tanya Soni and Nevin Dalvin were in the basement of Rau’s IAS Study Circle in Old Rajinder Nagar, a central Delhi area, where they were preparing for the government job exam. The three youngsters, two women and a man, from Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala respectively, had already discussed three episodes of flooding with their families, but the institute had done nothing to address the situation.
Aware of the numerous problems associated with these private centres that have been proliferating for some time without regulation, the Indian government published some guidelines at the beginning of the year. guidelines which require these “training centres” to register, pay fair taxes and comply with basic safety standards, while prohibiting the enrolment of pupils under the age of 16.
The Ministry of Education had decided to intervene following a series of fatal accidents and suicides among students, which exposed the harsh reality of these centres, even imposing the obligation to install “anti-suicide fans” because some students had taken their own lives by hanging themselves.
The best-known centres are in Kota, Rajasthan, and prepare students for university entrance exams, especially the national exam that governs admission to medical school and to one of the 23 prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). The ratio of candidates who sit the IIT entrance exam to those who get in is 50 to 1 or even 100 to 1. Out of a million candidates, only 10,000 pass the JEE, as the exam is called.
It is a competition that takes a serious toll on students. This year, among those attending the various centres in Kota (more than 300 across the city), there were 12 suicides, while last year there were 26, the highest number ever recorded.
An estimated 200,000 students from all over India flock to Kota every year, a town made famous when Vinod Kumar Bansal, an engineer who could no longer work due to illness, began tutoring students in his home. As many of them were able to get into an IIT – which had already become synonymous with wealth and success – Bansal became famous and others copied his model, creating a new market that is now worth $500 million.
When they realized that this was a growing business, the “coaching centers” began to invest in marketing and advertising to attract middle school students as well. The performance of teenagers attending public schools in rural areas is, in fact, very poor, And that is why families invest in private lessons from a very early age, often going into debt.
That’s why when they arrive at exam preparation centers, whether to enter university or for a public job (stable, well-paid and offering social security services), students feel pressured because they don’t want to disappoint their family. Stress and isolation don’t help either. “Young people have an emotional response to situations because their prefrontal cortex is still is not fully developed“They feel guilty because they have let their family down and because this failure is the end of their expectations,” explains psychotherapist Swati Bajpai.
Life in these centres is very hard: they study up to 18 hours a day, seven days a week, and live alone in overcrowded student residences. Every 15 days they are assessed to check their level. Two investigations They showed that most suicides occurred precisely when the test results were announced and that the students who took their own lives came from low-income families.
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