Kota: graveyard of young dreams

“???? ???? ?????? ???? , ??? ??? ??? ??? ? ??? ??”

(“God give me power, stop me from taking the wrong step”)

These were the words scribbled on the walls of the famous ‘Radha Krishna mandir’ in Talwandi, Kota.

Kota recorded twenty-eight suicides so far in 2023. These numbers were fifteen, eighteen, twenty, seven, seventeen and eighteen in 2022, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015 respectively.?

With students getting back with their families due to lockdown in 2020 and 2021, the tally was reduced dramatically in those years but with offline coaching blowing off again, three lives ending per month is the average suicide rate in Kota. It has now become conspicuous that ‘the grass is not so green on the other side’.

Unveiling the Kota Suicide Epidemic

Like Mumbai, Kota has also become the ‘city of dreams’ for youth aspiring to test their luck and aptitude against their big IIT and AIIMS dreams. At the amateur age of only fifteen and sixteen, thousands of students move to Kota with sparkling eyes and the weight of their parent’s expectations on their shoulders with no thought of turning back.?

When a student this young takes the ‘extreme step’, it is not only them who is affected but their families, their teachers, friends, reference groups, and the whole society - all of them are put inside the witness box. With so many lives at stake, it becomes important for us to understand and maturely address the ‘most crucial’. Therefore, this blog aims to raise awareness and prompt a positive change.

Taking into account the tally of this year, till August, there have been twenty-three cases of suicides in Kota- out of which there were four female and nineteen male students. There were thirteen minors and ten adults belonging mostly to financially feeble families who had put their blood, sweat and tears into their ward’s education.?

Whom to blame?

This question requires immediate attention at this point of time.

Are we to blame the society that has made these students believe they are “worthless” if they don’t get good ranks?

Or Is it the entrance examination that is told to be the evidence of how the life of these souls is going to turn out?

Or the parents who have forced their child to choose a path that is simply not for them? Or Are they the victims of societal pressure too??

Or Are we to blame the students themselves who couldn’t take the unrealistic expectation and the pressure??

Flipping into the science of it, we will have to understand that a suicide attempt is not an instantaneous mishap but it is the outcome of multiple incidents and their adverse effect on the victim. Look at it as a ‘chain reaction’ - one thing leads to another and finally results in the irrevocable.?

Academics = atrocities

Examinations like IIT JEE and NEET require rigorous hard work and educators often suggest students to manage twelve to sixteen hours of self-study apart from regular coaching classes. Some students do handle the burden adequately but some of them, despite the efforts fail to do so.

Parental and societal expectations

Adding up to the unachievable academic goals, the burden of suppositions from their family and society makes the journey of these youngsters even more difficult.?

In the name of motivation, parents often draw comparisons between their ward’s peers and them. This makes the little hearts feel disowned in a way.?

Children often feel reluctant to share their side of the story as they feel nobody would understand. They are sometimes not even allowed to cry or crib because they have learnt or seen how it is taken to be a sign of weakness and how people see it as a “taboo.”

This further makes them suppress their emotions creating mountains of emotions stored in their heart, caged to never see the light of the day. All these overwhelming emotions results in the declination of their mental health state.?

Financial burdens

Parents of most of the students take loans and sell off properties to gather capital to pay off the high fees of institutes and residences. The average rent for PG in Kota adds up to be twelve thousand to twenty thousand a month. They know that their parents are already carrying a burden of heavy bills and when their performance does not reciprocate, they cannot help but experience excessive guilt.?

Isolation and loneliness

Far from their families and tended environment, adolescents go through a roller coaster of emotions.?

Many of these aspirants leave the formal way of schooling and get admitted into dummy schools in Kota. At the age of exploring possibilities of life, adolescents are thrown into the ‘rat race.’

Students - when they move to Kota find it challenging to identify genuine acquaintances and confide in them. Every fellow candidate is seen as competition - this stops them from being pillars of support for each other and for the most part, they end up being isolated.?

Lack of emotional support

Though, the students are wonted to this monotony but with no place for venting out and lack of emotional support, it becomes hard for them to maintain mental and emotional stability.

To attain balance, they often find refuge in substance abuse and romantic relationships that contribute to the surge of juvenile crimes and unplanned teenage pregnancies in Kota.?

A sixteen-year-old girl from an elite coaching institute in Kota states that it is customary for her to feel lonely and pressured daily and end up in tears as an aftermath of negative thoughts.

She says that her father who sent her to Kota- is a small greengrocer in Bihar. While he struggles to put food on the table, the strive for his daughter’s big medical dream is never put off.?

Considering the plight of her baba’s (father’s) life, she is unable to gather some courage and tell him that she is not accustomed to this cut-throat competition and that she wants to take up something of her interest and aptitude.

She often feels homesick and lonely in this competitive environment where even her friends are rivals first and companions later. With the big emotional baggage of a vast syllabus and parental expectations, she quests for someone to confide in but to her dismay, she doesn’t know any outlet.?

The Role of the Education System

Coaching, Competition and Crisis

With lakhs of students enrolling every year, the competition inside the institutional systems is at its peak. The average of weekly tests determines one's place in the hierarchy of the ranking system.?

The students are put in different batches according to their performance.?

As the intention of any coaching institute is to showcase their brightest students, the students of the higher batches get facilities like air-conditioned residences, better quality food, additional resources, separate studying rooms, and most importantly one- to -one interaction with the teachers.?

The syllabus in these institutes runs a thousand miles an hour - if in this scenario, the child gets sick, he or she ends up falling way behind others.

Inadequate support systems

The average class size in Kota is 200 to 300 students per batch. With class swarming with students, it is burdensome for the educator to establish one-to-one relationships with every student. Consequently, many introverted students who experience the fear of embarrassment and feel hesitant to ask doubts are often lost in the shadows and not paid attention to.?

Even though there are counselors available, the hired ones are either under qualified or one counsellor is made to handle hundreds of students at a time. It is impossible for them to pay attention to each and every student or handle their unique situation.

Impact on teachers

While addressing the problems of the students, we often overlook the adversity the teachers go through. With hundreds of students to teach at a time, educators struggle to keep a check on their pupils. The rising suicide cases in Kota take a toll on teacher’s mental health as well. They consider it their duty to deliver high-quality education to their students but news like these do shatter them and affect their momentum. The responsibility dawns upon them to equip teaching methods that would suit the psyche of the students efficiently.

Are elite institutes giving their best?

Motion education? is one of the revolutionary institutions that functions to provide students with better learning conditions. The institute founded by NV sir - often referred to as?

‘real life Jeetu bhaiya’? aims towards encouraging knowledge acquisition rather than grinding to crack competitive examinations. The primary goal of Motion classes is to bring about discipline in children.

The organisation does not believe in heavy marketing and advertises its failure and success simultaneously and there is no segregation of students based on their marks.

Mental Health and Well-being

While physical health is apparent, mental health is often inconspicuous.?

So what can be done? How can we contribute to the change?

Start by creating a safe space. If the young minds aren’t coming to confide in you or anyone else, they have made this belief within themselves that “you don’t talk about mental health” or “you are weak if you are being vulnerable” or they are simply scared that they would be berated if they talk about their mental health.?

What can you do to change this?

Create a safe space where they feel free to talk. Tell them “failures are a part of life”, tell them they can tell you anything. Tell them, “you will always be there for them” and that they or their mental health come first.?

And when they actually confide in you. Listen. Understand the gravity. Lend a ear and a hand to support them.?

Promoting Positive Change

Government in Action

Institutes have been instructed to discourage competitiveness among fellow students and stop the practice of batch segregation according to marks obtained by the students. The Government has also asked institutions to ease the process of admission withdrawal and provide proper refunds to students who wish to discontinue their preparation.

Spring fans and anti-suicide nets have been installed in student residences to reduce the possibility of such mishaps.?

The police department in Kota has also created a special student cell a.k.a ‘darwaaze pe dastak yojna’ that aims towards identifying warning signs connecting to the suffering students and reaching out to them personally on their doors to help them out of their misery.

Local organisations and volunteers for the cause

Numerous non-government organisations have come forward to give the situation a good turn. Vishakha is one such volunteer group targeting the improvement of the lives of aspirants in Kota. They work to provide a safe place for students to ‘self-explore’ and strengthen their willpower. Moreover, the organisation gives counselling sessions to migrant students and helps them adjust to the new environment.

What can parents do?

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When children get no solutions to their problems, they turn to their parents. In this case, parents should be supportive of their wards. They should try to put themselves in their child’s shoes and empathize well. Parents should always be accepting of their child and should be ready to receive a ‘no’ when their child is not able to perform well. Parents should be in constant contact with their children and try to have conversations about topics other than academics with them.

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How can we help each other?

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In the heat of competition, we often fail to humanize our peers and treat them as our cut-throat rivals but is it the right way to get away with this? All the students in Kota aim towards a common goal, they face similar problems and find themselves in the same state of bewilderment. When everything is alike, why can we not stand up and give shoulders to each other? Being too selfish might not help you get through the exam but being a little selfless can surely save many innocent lives.

Here is a message to all: Believing in yourself will really help. Even if you think it is the end, it is not.

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The bottom line…….

Though, Kota has now become a site of business in the education industry- it is not too late to undo the disaster. With a new generation of ideas and innovation coming into the picture, we will be able to preserve young minds and their unexplored potential.

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We will have to understand that everyone is built differently. All of us are running for different races as career options are not limited to medicine and engineering. It is high time that we stop pressuring children to go against their desires.

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We should develop a sense of acceptance towards the anomaly of the current generation. The times have changed and so should we.? Coaching institutes along with the government have taken steps to eradicate the problem and reach to the roots. With the collective effort of all the stakeholders, there will be no lives lost and no dreams shattered.

Call for help

If any of our readers are facing difficulties with their mental health, feel free to use the following resources for help

●???????? GPS Kota helplines:- 0744-2333666, 0744-2414141

●???????? NIMHANS:- 080-46110007 (https://nimhans.ac.in/pssmhs-helpline/)

●???????? Peak Mind:- 080-47092334 (Peakmind. in)

●???????? Therapize India:- https://www.therapizeindia.com/copy-of-therapize-tribes

●???????? Sumaitri (suicide helpline):- 011-23389090, 09315767849 (https://sumaitri.net/)

●???????? Sneha (suicide helpline):- 044-24640050, 044-24640060 (https://snehaindia.org/new/)

Feel free to reach out to lostalittle (https://www.lostalittle.com/) at just Rs 99/-. Remember we are not a crisis helpline, in case of emergencies or urgent mental health issues, we may have limited capacity to provide immediate assistance. Use the above mentioned helplines or contact local emergency services or crisis hotline for professional support

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