The latest news about the apex court of the country passing stricture against the Rajasthan Government on the surge in suicide cases in the ‘coaching centre’ city of Kota comes as no surprise. The suicides have been a more or less regular phenomenon over many past many years, even as the coaching business in the city continued to grow and flourish with the patronage of all beneficiary groups—the students, part-time or full-time teachers and the promoters of these centres. A total of 14 suicide cases in this calendar year so far points to an average figure of 3 suicides every month.
But as per details appearing in the print media news item on May 23, 2025, the case of student suicide at IIT Kharagpur was also being heard by the Supreme Court. The incidence of student suicides is, obviously, not limited to Kota’s coaching centre industry but extends beyond it to country’s premier professional institutions like the IITs. Thus, the problem of student suicides afflicts the IIT undergraduate student population, besides the IIT aspirant student groups.
In the context of the above suicide cases, it is saddening to see the apex court castigating the police for delay in FIR lodgement, something which is ubiquitous in our country and hardly surprising because we continue to administer policing through the British time Indian Police Act of 1861 even 78 years after political independence. It further painful to observe the state government counsel of Rajasthan providing the usual bureaucratic and stereotyped reply to the court bench about a SIT being constituted to examine the cases of suicides in the coaching centre city of Kota.
The problem will not be solved by the apex court passing stricture on the state government and the state government performing the ritualistic action of forming an SIT to investigate the unfortunate phenomena in detail. The gaps are elsewhere — in our bureaucratic structure, in our laws and legal framework, and in our educational system. Our bureaucracy, an archaic structural hangover of colonial times, is ill-equipped to reform and refine systems in various domains. Our laws lack teeth and are too weak to nail down the criminal and corrupt. Our educational ecosystem is heavily marks-oriented, with grossly inadequate professional colleges to accommodate the ever-bourgeoning student population.
The less said about the near mafia-like coaching centre industry, the better it is. These coaching centres have drained money out of the middle- and lower-class parents of students due to backbreaking fees; created unhealthy competition among students vying for limited seats in professional colleges; exacerbated mental and physical load on them, leading to depression and suicidal tendencies, done nothing to enhance the academic ability of the entrants to professional institutions and put more brilliant and capable but poorer family students to grave disadvantage. But sadly, our legal and administrative institutions do not look at these aspects of this matter. Core issues underneath the unfortunate incidents of students’ suicides are not identified, highlighted and addressed.
The cases of undergraduate suicides in IITs are more damning. There, the students, especially those securing admission on the basis of caste-based reservation quotas, find it difficult to cope with the tough academic coursework. Even the more capable students are subjected to stress because of the competition for better marks and grades, which are given premium by the teaching faculty, and the resulting peer group pressure.
The writer is of the strong opinion that all coaching centres like the ones existing in Kota should be blanket banned. Even without them, the best and the most deserving students will be selected for professional institutions as the students will beat the competition through their sheer raw talent and self-study. And this will happen without the fat fees paid through the nose by parents of students with limited economic means. This will happen without these ugly suicides of youngsters in their prime of life. And this will happen without diluting the quality of academics in regular schools, which the coaching centres inexorably lead to.
We seriously need to think and deliberate on the above lines — to bring about the necessary changes in our institutions, systems, and even laws — to end the malaise of coaching centres, which are nothing short of an educational mafia.
