Help students deal with pressure in Kota

These losses are tragic and avoidable. The reasons are also not difficult to fathom. With 200,000 students, many from the hinterland, pouring into its coaching classes every year, Kota produces a slew of toppers across fields and competitive examinations, but often at a terrible cost – paid by those who find it impossible to cope with the breakneck pressure, the spartan non-scholastic existence and the rigorous classroom routine that can barely be called pedagogy. These risks are well known, and have even been documented in a 2018 report by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences that found students in India’s coaching capital depressed, ill and anxious.

Yet, little seems to move despite the mounting need for urgent interventions to help students deal with mental health problems. The government brought a bill last year to regulate coaching institutes, but it is yet to be tabled. That might provide some succour. But the real problem lies in India’s broken higher-education model and deep inequity, where a moonshot at some of the toughest examinations represents the only real chance for a young person to pull their families out of poverty. Unless parents, societies and governments work in tandem, young people will continue to suffer for goals that may be too improbable to achieve.