The tragedy of Kota: From edtech wars to rising suicide numbers

Student suicides in Kota

Kota, the dusty town in Rajasthan where career dreams are made, is tragically also where they are snuffed out.

For the Singh family, Kota was where Bahadur, the younger of two brothers, landed with the goal of clearing the coveted Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE).

Bahadur wanted to join the Indian Space Research Organisation and recently enrolled in edtech unicorn PhysicsWallah, inspired by the popularity and reputation of Alakh Pandey, its co-founder and a star teacher in IIT-JEE circles.

But the dream was short-lived. Bahadur died by suicide on July 9.

The 17-year-old was the 16th student to die by suicide in Kota this year. Student deaths are a yearly occurrence, but there are hardly any reforms or options for recourse. With 11 lives lost in the past three months alone, students are wilting under pressure amid cutthroat competition and exam pressure.

Take Bahadur’s case. A resident of Rampur, a town in Uttar Pradesh, he lost his father, the sole provider for the family, a few years ago. With his brother Jaibheem also studying, the only source of income for the family was a small shop and a farm, part of which was sold to fund his coaching.

"The weight of pressure on my brother was palpable," said Jaibheem, who last met Bahadur three days before his demise. Jaibheem travelled to Kota to plead with PhysicsWallah to lift the suspension imposed on Bahadur on June 30, following an altercation with a classmate.

"My brother was truly exceptional in his abilities. However, due to the suspension, he was plagued by various distressing thoughts. What if the suspension isn't revoked? What if he never gets another opportunity? He was aware of our financial struggles. He was also battling a worsening skin condition that added to our medical expenses. The mounting pressure became unbearable for him,” said Jaibheem, who filed an FIR against PhysicsWallah for abetment of suicide. Moneycontrol has reviewed a copy of the FIR.

Jaibheem returned to Rampur from Kota on July 6 as the institute did not budge after multiple requests. He added that he offered his brother to come back home with him and study online, but he was adamant to keep trying.

“During our last conversation around 8 pm the night before he died, Bahadur called me and maa and asked her to try and visit Kota in person to request them one more time. He thought if she requested, they might understand,” he said.

PhysicsWallah said it “deeply” regretted the unfortunate incident involving Bahadur.

“We had taken appropriate measures in response to a disciplinary situation involving him. Following our protocol, we promptly notified his parents and brother about the situation and provided them with guidance to consider relocating him to Delhi, which is closer to his home. This step was aimed at ensuring his well-being and facilitating closer support from his family during this time,” a PhysicsWallah spokesperson said in response to queries sent by Moneycontrol.

The Kota pressure cooker

For new learners, the message is rammed home the moment they set foot in Kota. Tall billboards with mission statements like "Path to success," "Educating for a better tomorrow," and "Nurturing potential through education" dominate the town, apart from cutouts of students with impressive all-India ranks.

These slogans are by coaching centres such as Allen Career Institute, Resonance Eduventures, and Motion Classes, which have flourished and expanded in Kota. Collectively, these institutions have turned Kota into a bustling hub for students aspiring to crack entrance exams and secure admissions into India's top engineering and medical institutes.

"The promise of a bright future is a script that has been told to these students and everyone is putting everything into that hope," said Ahla Matra, a psychologist, explaining how the minds of 16-18-year-olds are impacted in the coaching hub.

Matra said these impressionable minds internalise the pressure and start feeling inadequate if they don't meet certain standards. Being miles away from home adds to the stress, in most cases.

"At that point, where your identity is just forming and you're still figuring out your social circle, going through such a transition can be extremely difficult. You are essentially disrupting your existing social circles from whichever city you are in, moving to a brand new city, and trying to navigate peer relationships,” she said.

Matra added that it becomes even more challenging because the young person is already under so much pressure.

“Entering the coaching system feels sudden and jarring – there's no easing into the process and it can be very overwhelming. Students end up studying for 16-18 hours a day, and that's a recipe for a mental health disaster as their lives are thrown out of balance," she said.

A senior teacher, requesting anonymity, shared how the self-worth and identity of students take a hit as they navigate severe competition, with Kota getting more crowded by the year.

“We see a very huge number of high-performing students enter Kota every year. Let’s say as a student I had given all I got to score 98 percent in my boards, I was known as the topper of my school, but when I entered Kota, there were thousands of students just like me. Now to compete with them I will have to put in more effort,” the teacher said.

The senior teacher said educators prioritise teaching only the essential study techniques, problem-solving strategies, and familiarising them with the course and curriculum.

“No one is teaching them how to deal with the added pressure and not get overwhelmed,” they added.

Mental health pandemic follows Covid

For students, such a transition in the aftermath of the pandemic has proven to be more challenging.

"Students that have come last year lost two crucial years of learning because of the pandemic, so the basics of these students haven't been up to the mark, adding to the pressure," Anu Gupta, a teacher at Allen, told Moneycontrol.

According to reports, 16 learners died by suicide in six months in 2023 compared with the same number all of last year.

"Allen has added the number of counsellors it had to address the increasing pressure on students," said another teacher from Kota, requesting anonymity. "Besides, it also has mentors who help students in addressing their issues, and these mentors have started receiving more calls from students this year."

To be sure, many people said that while three of these learners studied at PhysicsWallah, the edtech unicorn that entered Kota only last year, 11 were students of Allen, the legacy coaching giant run by the Maheshwaris.

The Rajasthan government seems to have taken cognizance of the situation and planned to introduce a law to reduce the pressure on students. However, recent media reports suggested that the Rajasthan Coaching Institute (Control and Regulation) Bill 2023 has been put on the backburner.

Kota has changed

Last year, Kota went through a transition when a high-pitched battle broke out between legacy coaching academies and a scrum of heavily funded edtech startups such as Unacademy and PhysicsWallah, which opened centres in Kota, hoping to tap its captive student population.

Allen’s Gupta explained that earlier, when Kota was just developing, there were very few coaching institutes and only some students could get in because the bar was so high.

“Now it has become too commercialised and it has led to a greater number of seats, so the number of aspirants has also gone up, putting more pressure on students,” said Gupta, who has been a part of Kota’s coaching hub for a long time in various roles and was a student at another legacy institute, Bansal Classes, years ago.

In July 2022, Moneycontrol reported that Kota had about 3,00,000 students coming in this year, a two-fold jump over levels in 2019, a pre-pandemic year.

The intense rivalry between the incumbents and the edtech startups gave Kota a new lease of life a year after the hub ground to a halt in March 2020 due to the pandemic.

Think about this: Presently, there are more than a million individuals aspiring to join the IITs. However, the combined number of available seats across all 23 IITs in India is limited to a mere 17,400. Consequently, the competition for each of these seats is extraordinarily fierce. Of the million aspirants, about 150,000 had gone to Kota in 2022, Moneycontrol had reported in its series.

With more students fighting for the same number of seats, the competition has sky-rocketed putting more pressure on the young minds.

"Now learners who are coming to Kota and starting their study are taking such steps within one or two months, which is alarming, Previously, suicides were happening at the end of the session when learners attempted all the exams and didn't get desired results due to pressure from parents or friends," said the senior teacher.

This pattern has posed greater challenges for teachers and institutes as they are not yet familiar with the students, making it tougher to identify signs of stress.

"Earlier, when students used to come to Kota, they would share everything with their teachers. But now, with such early incidents, the rapport hasn't been built with teachers, making it difficult to guide them correctly,” the senior teacher said.

Angel investor Aniruddha Malpani said the entry of heavily funded companies has made the situation in Kota worse.

“It is going to get worse before it gets any better. What these edtech guys will essentially do is they will try to put band-aids on fractures to show they are doing something. They will conduct counselling sessions, they will do something for kids entertainment – open up a sports ground, so on and so forth. But this is all rubbish,” Malpani told Moneycontrol.

What should institutes do

Matra agrees, in principle, that institutes follow an approach limited only to counselling when it comes to dealing with students under distress.

"The mental health conversation should focus on prevention, not just intervention," she said.

She said there is a need for a balance between the amount of studying and work that they have to put in and the amount of rest and recovery they take, and it should not be limited to counselling.

"We have to actively fight against the narrative that students who struggle within this system lack mental ability or resilience," Matra added.

It is known that all students who enter Kota’s system will not earn a seat. Stakeholders believe that there needs to be a mindset shift towards learning rather than cracking entrance exams at any cost.

Nitin Vijay, the founder of Motion Classes, said lifting the burden on students that their lives depend on whether or not they crack the tests will have far-reaching benefits.

“If our child is doing better today than yesterday, then we consider it a success. We teach them to work smartly. Our system and the hard work of the child also pays off… We sincerely believe that every child who comes to Kota cannot be selected but we teach our children that if you learn to work hard for 12-14 hours every day then you cannot fail in life,” Vijay told Moneycontrol.

Identifying signs of distress

Allen’s Gupta added that lack of communication and pressure of expectations from parents prove to be a worry for students very often.

"Parents are expecting good ranks and often don't consider the challenges students face due to the pandemic. They tend to compare kids' ranks and marks directly with what they have spent on fees and hostels, which can discourage students," he said.

Matra said that the best way that parents can support their children is to help them discover their own strengths and nurture them.

“If the child's strength lies elsewhere, that doesn't mean that they won't have a bright future in other ways," she added.

Matra suggested that parents should try to create an open channel of communication with their children early on.

“Parents should be willing to make a space where the child feels safe and free enough to share what they're going through," she added.

For those who have children studying away from home, Matra suggested that they look for signs like shifts in mood, social withdrawal, sleep disruption, and frequent illnesses as indicators of struggle.

“When demands or expectations severely outweigh a student's capacity, it is natural to feel overwhelmed, and it's okay to take a step back and reassess. Parents should try and convey this to their children," Matra said.

Is it worth the lives lost?

"It's heartbreaking to reduce students to just their numbers, making them feel like their worth is solely based on academic performance," Matra added.

For things to look up, Malpani said there is a need for a hard reset in processes by institutes.

“This all requires deep-rooted change and the reality is there's so much inertia in our society and in our country, everyone says there's no other option. If you start with this attitude that there's no other option, then you will never be able to change it,” said Malpani.

On July 16, another student who enrolled in a coaching centre in Kota to prepare for the medical college entrance exam died by suicide, taking the toll to 17 this year.

As the situation worsens, the discourse around the dark side of the coaching hub of India boils down to this: Is losing one’s life worth the uncertain promise of a bright future?

If you are aware of anyone facing mental health issues or feeling suicidal, please provide help. Please find helpline numbers that can offer support below:

Aasra's 24x7 Helpline: 9820466726.

Helplines across India can be found here.