Daybreak - The Kota factory is imploding and student suicides are not the only reason

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

After the pandemic years, Kota’s coaching industry saw an unprecedented boom. Money was pouring in from everywhere–from edtechs to investors. In the last five years, Kota saw about 2 lakh engineering and medical aspirants, on average, arrive from across the country. Kota runs on stiff competition not just among the students but also among the scores of institutes that host and prep them. But since the past four months, Kota’s reputation has been on the line. Student admissions have dropped, with coaching-centre owners pegging it to be at least 20%. While it is partially because of the rising number of student suicides, it is not the only reason why Kota may be one result away from losing its star position in the coaching business.Tune in.RecommendationKota’s Rs 6,000 cr coaching business may never be the same againDaybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too. It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganesh, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

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to the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production. Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording. Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get an alert, as soon as we release our first episode, please follow Intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcast. or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode.

Rohi Jalan is a student of class 12. She's prepping for the NEAT exam. Let me take you through her day. She wakes up at 7 a.m. in a tiny, dingy room with a bare minimum of furniture, a bed and a study table. The walls are covered with notes. and she studies for 14 hours.

In between, she takes a nap for about two hours and she's up till 3 a.m. drowning in her books. She lives in Kota Rajasthan, the coaching capital of the country. You know how tourist towns are around the world? The moment you land at the airport or debaubord at the train station, you just know that this place survives on tourism. Kota is just like that. You get down from the train and you look around and there are scores and scores of hoardings and billboards, advertising, coaching institutes and hostels and paying guests and different services and stationary.

It has everything that a hardworking, quote-unquote, focus student would need. Kota's economy revolves around students. You probably knew that already. But after the pandemic years, Kota's coaching industry saw an unprecedented boom. Money was pouring in from everywhere, from ed techs to investors. In the last five years, actually, Kota saw about 2,000 engineering and medical aspirants, on an average, arrived from all over the country. So to cater to them, the number of coaching institutes kept growing.

And naturally, competition grew stiff. Now, when you think about it, you realize that all of this money rests on the shoulders of the students who are enrolled at these institutes. It's all about their rankings and all these national level entrance exams, be it for engineering or for medicine. So the whole system functions in a way that students like Arrohi are constantly being pushed harder and harder. In fact, it has reached an extreme now and cracks are repeated. You must have heard about the rising number of student suicides. In fact, just on Wednesday this week, another student preparing for the NEET exam committed suicide in the city. It was the 26th such case in this year.

Kota's reputation and its entire economy is kind of at stake now. And it's showing in the numbers. Coaching Institute owners say that student admissions have dropped by at least 20%. But it's not just a lot. just because of the student's suicides. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Nickda Sharma, and I don't chase the news cycle. Instead, thrice a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays,

I will come to you with one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Friday, the 29th of September. You know that coaching institutes in quota, for years now, have actually been following a system of dividing students based on their performance. It's almost a kind of a way of segregation, I would say. Coaching institutes are basically betting

on the students' potential and how well they will do or what sort of a rank they will hold in these national level entrance exams. Let me give you a peek into this whole system. Right on top of this pyramid are the ones who the institutes think will top the examinations.

This is a group of about 50 to 20 potential All India Toppers for JEE or NED. These students get a different set of teachers. Their fees are waived off and all their comforts are taken care of. After that comes the Starbatch, constituting of students who are most likely to clear the final exams. This is followed by the average students who are less likely to clear the final exams and get a seat but may clear the qualifying exams, that is the JEE mains. And right at the bottom of this pyramid are the enthusiast students whose scores are very low

and their chances of clearing exams are also very low. And this is not the end of the rough patch for Cota students. Like I told you earlier, it is a super high-pressure environment that almost thrives on performance rating and segregation. The concept of holidays on weekends has been absent for them this entire time. Just imagine. And that's not even the end of it. There's also full-on parental surveillance in place.

Parents are equally complicit in the entire affair. They make sure that students do nothing but study. They micromanage their children with the help of coaching institutes and hostels. So much so that coaching institutes actually elizabeth. alert the parents if their children miss even a day of classes, besides also sending them weekly test results. Stay tuned for more. In the last decade, quota has produced seven rank one holders in NEET and six joint entrance examination or JEE toppers, which is why it is quite literally the coaching capital of the entire country. It's almost like its job is to churn

outtoppers, like it's almost some kind of a dystopian factory. But some things have changed now and this factory is not working like before. Why? Because, and I don't think it is a stretch to say that it is all too commercialized. The system has changed. It was a fragile balance anyway that rested on razor sharp focus from students and these are students who genuinely wanted to crack these exams. It was not just because of parental or societal pressure. But now this entire ecosystem is open to anyone whose parents can afford to pay. Pramod Maheshwari, the founder of Career Point, told my colleague Lifia Khan, and I'm quoting, even if the number of institutes is growing, it would not translate into better results overnight. They have invited students who cannot be

coached and promised the sky to them. End quote. From word, of mouth publicity that took off in the 1990s to now, it is full-fledged big budget advertising. Plus, you can't ignore the cultural transformation. For the first time in Quota's nearly 30 years of teaching history, a professional CEO and not an educator or a teacher was leading the education business. And that's not even the end of these questionable practices. Teachers are being pushed at insanely high salaries and so are students from rival institutes. You will not believe coaching institutes are paying money to topers to claim results. So you can see how something that any way existed on a very thin balance is being pushed to the brink for profits. And the consequences

of this are quite evident. Kota saw its coaching industry grow by leaps and bounds with a highest number of student admissions back in 2022. But a year later, in fact, since the last four months, quota's reputation has been on the line. Student admissions have dropped with the coaching center owners claiming that it is at least 20% or 30,000 to 40,000 students lesser than before. So what is next for quota? Coming up. Maheshwari from Career Point told us that now a lot depends on the next year's results. He said, and I'm quoting, the entire atmosphere is denigrating due to competition. All this needs to stop.

End quote. He said that the city of quota is at a precipice. And if 2024 enrollment figures are not corrected, the city's coaching center capital tag is under threat. Also because of the student suicides and the bad rep that Kota is getting, even the district administration is trying to step in. Usually the concept of holidays on weekends didn't even exist in quota. But in the last one and a half months, there is a ban on weekly tests,

plus there are mandatory four holidays per month. And also the idea of fun hours has been introduced. But it does seem like it's all coming in too late and it's all too little. These half measures will not solve the rot at the core. The city of Kota needs a reckoning and not just band-aid solutions. A decisive choice needs to be made with the well-being of students at the centre of it, and not just profits. Dear listeners, my colleague Kali Kallifia visited Kota to report this story.

Her report has a lot more information and details, so please do read it in full. I absolutely insist. I have linked the story to the show notes of this episode. Thank you for listening and see you with a brand new story on Monday. Daybreak is produced

from the newsroom of the Ken India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletters,

subscriber-only apps and podcast extras. Head to the Ken. and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the website. I am Sniqa Sharma, your host, and today's episode was edited by my colleague Rajiv Sien.