Editor’s note – The author provides a subjective analysis based on objective observations from his personal experience as a student in Kota which very well exposes the reality in the coaching centers of India’s coaching hub – Kota.
Author’s note – Kota brings in thousands of the most intelligent brains in India promising them to show them the light towards a bright career, but instead, for their avarice, they lead these brains to the darkest canal of life.
The moment you keep your feet on the platform of the Kota railway station and take a close look at it, the most striking thing that you will notice that unlike any other city in the world, where you get to see beautiful, size zero models posing with different technological gadgets on advertising posters or those placards with, ’Buy one, get one free (sometimes two or three too!)’, here in Kota you will get to read only these-
‘Top notch faculty for IITJEE, AIEEE, AIPMT’, 'The No.1 coaching institute for IITJEE,AIEEE,AIPMT’, 'Selection in IIT guaranteed or else money back (not guaranteed)’,'IIT is no longer a dream, join XYZ institute’, and you will get to see hundreds of smiling faces of success who have cracked and topped the entrance exams in India.
Welcome to Kota, the coaching hub of India or the Knowledge city of India as termed by the localities (Kotaites)! Thousands of students arrive in this dusty town in south-eastern Rajasthan with their parents every year to join the cram schools to make sure that their future becomes bright by getting into the most prestigious institutes, universities or colleges in India by cracking the entrance exams, and why not, because from the last decade, the coaching classes have produced mind-boggling results in the toughest of entrance exams.
When you come out of the dirty railway station, scores of auto drivers will welcome you with a smile as if they have got their next prey.
When you tell your destination or the institute you have to reach, the distance doesn’t matter, the minimum fare is Rs.100, plus Rs.50 for luggage, plus Rs.50 if there are more than two people travelling. Bargaining doesn’t help and neither does searching for another auto driver because all of them have a ‘khaandaani rishta’ and they charge the same. I think some special kind of autos’ run in Kota which burn more fuel when the load is more because the fare keeps increasing with the no. of people traveling.
On your way to the XYZ institute, you will get a rough view of the complete town, the barren aerodrome (I have never seen anything taking off or landing or any people in this mini airport), the flyover ( the only one) which shakes all your internal organs in the body while traveling, the aerodrome circle(a big circle) where you will see people taking bath below the fountain and the big advertisement posters of different schools and coaching institutes with such statements that will confuse you to the limit on which institute you should join.
‘Ex HOD of XYZ institute, now with ABC institute’, 'Ex top notch faculty of XYZ institute with PQR classes’, 'ABC classes have the best faculty’, 'Thundering results in IIITJEE 2010′.
When you reach the XYZ institute, you will be awestruck seeing the infrastructure of the institute which is even better than many of the IITs’ or NITs’ where you would want to go. Actually, infrastructure is directly proportional to the huge fees that you have to pay. After the admission is done, the next big job is searching for a suitable area, a suitable house, a suitable room where the student can stay. Hundreds of brokers stand outside the institute in search of their prey of the day. After gaining some knowledge from the brokers and the localities, when you start your journey to search for a good hostel or a PG, you will experience the worst thing that Kota can offer you, its weather. The temperature is constantly around 50 degree Celsius in the months of summer and the sun keeps burning over your head sucking up all the juices inside your body and the hot ‘loo’ winds keep burning your face and your hands. You will get a bigger shock when you look out for rooms in the hot spot areas of Kota where thousands of students live. A room which can just fit in a single bed, a table and a chair and a cupboard costs Rs.5,000 per month and a bit more spacious rooms or double rooms with more facilities may cost up to Rs.15,000 per month. This is not Dubai, Mumbai or Bangalore; this is Kota, a small town in Rajasthan. And when you ask the owners to reduce the rent a little, they will give you a look as if you have asked them for their kidneys. No parent in this world will look at their pocket when it comes to giving comfort to their children and the people in Kota know it very well, so people end up paying huge bucks for something which doesn’t deserve it just for the sake of their children’s comfort and career.
After selecting the best possible mess for providing food to the students, getting the student admitted in one of the best school in the town and buying all the necessities, when the parent leave their child behind alone in this town and go back, the first thing which the student feels is excitement of living in a new environment with new friends, with new people and studying in a system of education which is quite different from anywhere in the world. This feeling of excitement quite interestingly takes a curved route in two years and reaches to feelings of pressure, frustration, depression and finally failure.
When the student enters the class for the first time, it turns quite surprising for him/her to see that he/she has to study in a class consisting of more than 150 students and this figure touches 200 to 250 in many institutes. For a fact, the teacher-to-students ratio in all these institutes is 1:200 and there is just no personal care given to students at all. The attitude is,’ you study if you want, don’t study if you don’t want, who cares’. There can’t be a better definition for ‘zero’ than the personal care given to students in Kota. And thus, what you get to see is that the most talented students of India smoking away on streets, living their days in cyber cafes and many such things like drinking and drugs! Every day, a student is given a DPP (Daily Practice Problem) sheet which the student has to complete by next class and no matter how intelligent or how good you are at problem solving, it’s just not possible to finish by time, it’s just pressure building. As days pass by, homework starts piling up and after a few months, many students just stop doing homework at all. Eventually the student after a few months looses all his hopes and drowns himself in his room, which becomes a HELL!
The complete education system in Kota is designed in such a way that it just concentrates on cracking through the entrance exams by hook or crook. Every teacher comes into the class, derives hundreds of formulas’ and conclusions which the students need to mug up and vomit it in the thousands of tough problems given to them which sometimes make the student feel that the problems are teasing their brains.
In Kota, a student doesn’t need to go to school at all and pays Rs.40,000 per year for just registering their name in the educational exam boards. As we all know, the school is a place where we learn how to discipline ourselves, how to improve our analytical thinking, how to improve our communication skills, how to improve our knowledge but here in Kota, the students lack all of these qualities as there is no exposure to such things and finally there is no intellectual development in a student. And finally what happens is, half of the students somehow manage to pass their board exams and the remaining students hang their career in the midway! And mind it; these are the best students of India.
Every topic is taught in the toughest way possible in the cram schools which washes away all the interest from it and concentration is just given to problem solving, just on how to get marks in an exam and not on the beautiful concepts and theories which have so many applications in our day-to-day life. The schedule of classes is just so hectic that a student is never left for any creative work, for any rest and Life, within a few months becomes a strife, which just taunts!
-a student smoking in kota and caught in my camera.
The best mess that you have selected for your children at Rs 2500 per month,not only provides you food, not only unhealthy food but unhealthy food made of just potatoes because that is the only cheap vegetable available in Kota. The weather is so extreme that it becomes a battle to adjust to it and is no way suitable for education. There are just no places in Kota where a student can go and refresh their mind and if you ask any Kotaite for a place to visit, they have just one name, ’Chambal Garden’, and they tell it with so much pride as if Shah Jahan used to have a walk in the garden and nowadays Shahrukh Khan has a walk in it but the reality is that, nowhere in the town except this place has greenery so it is called a garden. Naturally, a student drowns all his feelings in hundreds of cyber cafes in every street of the town and waste their time by watching movies or socializing in networking sites. The people of Kota are not at all friendly and they don’t waste even a single opportunity to rob the students and earn huge bucks because of the students coming into Kota for coaching. Sincerity which the institutes expect from a student is nothing but a constant struggle of at least 14 hours per day for 2 years which for a 16 year old staying alone in this highly competitive world is almost impossible. You slip a bit, and you are in the ditch.
And thousands of students yet flock into the city, following one another without having any dream or plan for the future. In the recent entrance exams which were held, a mind-blowing 5,464 students were selected in IITJEE alone from Kota out of 13,104 total students selected in India which is around 43% and around 50% of students selected in AIPMT were from Kota. The numbers just suggest the opposite to that I have written before that about Kota but the reality is that all these students struggle once they go to colleges and as the record says that not even a single student has made it big in the IIT’s or NIT’s who have taken coaching from Kota because the students are made virtual machines in Kota with no knowledge, no creativity, no communication skills. The students’ psychology is made in such a way that just by getting marks in an exam, just by rote learning will give them the success what they have dreamt of. This is one of the prime reasons for record minimum level of research taking place in the premium universities. All that they have is good skills of getting marks in an exam but will this skill make a bright future? Will it give a stable career? In fact, will it give a career? Just by getting into prestigious institutes, it doesn’t ensure you a stable career, it is your creativity, your intelligence which will give you what you want. The poor students from non-urban places in India just can’t afford to pay the huge amount of fees for these coaching and eventually they don’t get a chance to get into the prestigious institutes in India, which is partiality and which will lead to injustice to actual talent.
The best brains of India come to Kota for its renowned coaching and after two years virtually become machines which eventually results into brain drain. As we all can just do, blame our government for making such an education system but DO WE REALISE THAT IT IS WE WHO ARE MAKING THIS SYSTEM? IT IS WE WHO ARE CREATING THIS UNHEALTHY COMPEITITION. And this coaching phenomenon is slowly spreading throughout the country, especially in Hyderabad, New Delhi and Indore! This is why our Indian Government and the IITs’ have been trying to stop this coaching phenomenon as it is reducing the potential of the talent our students in India possess. I give due credit to them but they should also try to make the entrance exams in such a way that will only test the intelligence of a student and not his mugging up capacity which will reduce the dependence of students on coaching institutes to crack these exams.
And for the parents, please think twice or thrice before making a decision because it’s a decision which will change your child’s life and make sure that you don’t let someone poach your child’s BRAIN!
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