Kota works on scoring more in student welfare
student suicides, 23 to date this year in the country's biggest coaching hub of Kota alone, has the study centres on the defensive. The heads of coaching institutes in Kota, where about 200,000 students from all over the country are currently preparing for various entrance exams including JEE and NEET, said they are taking steps aimed at mitigation.
Some are putting sports on the daily activity menu, while others are tracking psychological wellbeing and daily attendance, apart from having psychiatrists and psychologists on hand to keep depression at bay.
Academic and industry experts told ET the problem goes beyond just the coaching factories.
A paucity of engineering and medical seats in quality institutes, allied with relentless societal expectations to 'succeed'- which puts youth under unbearable pressure as they chase their dream to be an engineer or a doctor — are the main causes, according to them.
Amitabh Jhingan, partner at EY-Parthenon, said the mix of students has changed in recent years. «Earlier, Kota attracted highly motivated students with strong academic orientation, who could easily crack the entrance tests,» he said.
Now, over-ambitious parents are sending wards who're not inclined towards such pursuits by temperament to these coaching mills, convinced that medicine and engineering are the only professions worth aspiring for. They also include students who don't have a conventionally strong academic orientation, or are motivated by a calling that's not considered traditional.
Then there's the supply-demand gap in the number of seats available and students competing for them, according to V Ramgopal Rao, vice-chancellor, BITS Pilani and former director, IIT Delhi.
Mental health in focus
«This situation has
