The Cramming Town.....

On the banks of the Chambal, in the midst of an industrial region is a tuition town that is the proud home of numerous IIT-JEE rank holders and aspirants. Kota, Rajasthan, is everything you have read about and more — dotted with close to 400 coaching centres, it generates a certain heat that matches Kota’s summer temperatures. One would expect a slump in business due to the proposed change in JEE pattern, and the common ISEET exam in place of JEE and AIEEE. But what we instead see are hoardings for seminars on ISEET, and motivational publicity material on how to adapt to the changes. Through these posters, the coaching centres are trying to place themselves as the destination for any competitive exam.

The Kota centres offer training for many exams, but the focus on JEE is enormous. In fact, Bansal Classes, one of the pioneers, began offering AIPMT (All India Pre Medical Test) coaching only from this year.

Before tuition centres

Pramod Maheshwari, 40, founder of Career Point, has seen Kota grow from a nondescript industrial town to a hub of coaching centres — partly his contribution as well. In the late Eighties and early Nineties, some ex-employees of the textile industry, which was facing a lean patch, began offering tuitions. This metamorphosed into a coaching town. “In my days we did not have these coaching classes. When I was attempting the JEE, I had subscribed to the Agarwal’s correspondence material, which basically was a collection of previous years’ question papers,” says Maheshwari, who started coaching students in a tar godown. When Maheshwari was moulding himself into an IITian — he graduated from IIT-Delhi in 1993 — VK Bansal also organised his private tuition model and started focussing on competitive exams.

Bansal left a lucrative job with JK Synthetics, in Kota, in the late Eighties to coach students in the locality. His first IIT success happened in 1985, when his student made it to IIT-Roorkee. Diagnosed with muscular dystrophy in 1975, Bansal immersed himself in coaching young minds. His brother, PK Bansal, CEO of Bansal Classes, narrates the story, “He started teaching students at a dining table. After a few years he had to increase the size of the table. But after a while he had to shift to a garage, as his students grew out of the dining tables.”

According to Maheshwari, the JEE fever caught on in Kota after a few success stories made news. “My senior (from IIT-B) Sanjeev Arora received a `1 lakh cash prize from Brilliant Tutorials for clinching AIR (All-India Rank) 1 in JEE in 1986. It was then that people started recognising Kota as a place that was churning out some good results. There was also Sudeep Gupta, AIR 5 in 1989,” says Maheshwari.

Kota slowly and steadily grew to be the national coaching capital and is a `1,000-crore industry today.

Organised coaching

Each of these pioneering centres cater to more than 15,000 students a year! In Kota you get to witness what a corporate thought process can do to an unorganised sector like private tuitions — Career Point is listed on BSE and NSE. In defence of the coaching culture, Maheshwari quips, “Centres like ours help in giving opportunities and spreading awareness about competitive examinations to those who don’t have access to such information and guidance otherwise.”

PK Bansal agrees that they are not magicians. He says, “We can help a 1,000th rank-getter to get to 500. But for someone who is not initiated in the process it will be difficult. And if a candidate does not mind skipping a year or working very hard to make sure the rest of his life is comfortable, why not.”

Hordes of uniformed students march into classes as early as 6am and return long after sunset. “Our students have swipe cards. If they are absent for more than three days, we track them to their hostels and inform their parents. The aim is not to police them, but more about their welfare. In case we find they are ill, we take them to a hospital and tend to them until their parents arrive,” explains Maheshwari.

Personal attention

A special feature of these centres are the doubt-clearing-booths. Teachers occupy these booths after classes to clarify any doubts on an one-on-one basis. Time tables, exam schedules and holidays are listed on notice boards, proving these centres are at par with top universities, when it comes to corporate management skills. At Bansal Classes, parents can track their child’s performance online. “We even have a small auditorium where we screen movies related to academics or feature films (rarely though),” says PK Bansal.

Career Point hosts a kiosk “through which students can access previous test sheets, solutions, academic record and attendance,” explains Maheshwari. The sheer innovation and constant attempt to improve their services bring students to this city and the centres.

South Korean footprint

Etoos, a South Korean coaching giant that set foot in Kota a year ago, is trying to implement a new style of coaching. “Students can register for one course at a time with a teacher and a time slot of their choice. If they’re not satisfied with the teacher, they can shift to a different guide the next month,” says Gyung Sig Chin, director, Overseas Business Division, Etoos. According to Sig Chin, his country saw the same coaching craze 20 years ago. “Private coaching is very popular in South Korea as the school system is not strong and teachers do not get hefty salaries unlike the coaching centre faculty,” explains Sig Chin.

Etoos’s long-term plan is to offer online coaching. Presently, all their students get a handheld device, which has preloaded lectures by Etoos faculty. Sig Chin believes that this industry has great growth potential. He is confident that ISEET will not offset their India plans. In fact he has a message for Kapil Sibal, Union minster for human resource development. He says, “There will be attempts to revamp the system to root out coaching centres, but they will be thwarted. If the toughness quotient is reduced there will be more opportunity for corruption and the test will not be fair. My vote is for a single IIT-JEE. Students will get confused and stressed if the pattern is changed.”

Support system

In many Kota houses you will notice the board, ‘Tolet for Students only’. This is clearly a city that has been very welcoming to its students. “The students are a great addition to the environment here. They are focussed and do not cause trouble. We are proud to have housed champions of IIT-JEE,” says Saurav Agarwal, who runs Raghukul Residency in Vigyan Nagar, the hub of coaching centres. In addition to PG accommodation and hostels, the food joints and mess serve students a great deal. “If coaching centres were not here, my 15 employees would be jobless,” says Jitendra Agarwal, who runs Satkar Foods. It’s obvious the coaching boom has birthed a myriad of jobs in Kota. “If coaching centres take centre stage, people like me, autowallahs, van drivers, servants and shopkeepers are on the backstage. Lot of people from nearby towns come here for jobs,” says Jitendra.

Just like any other town, Kota has its own mall, on the outskirts and closer to the coaching hub of Vigyan Nagar. As expected, 80 per cent of the mall-goers seem to be teenagers. But we soon discover this is not the normal scene. “We are here to celebrate. Our classes have finally ended. We are going home. The mall visit is saved for birthdays only. We don’t have the time usually,” reveals Geeta Sharma, a student.

No time for school

While the target students are shuttling between coaching and hostel, the two-year coaching students who join after Class X and continue till Class XII have a different story. It is no secret that students from other towns and cities who join the Kota centres skip a major chunk of their schooling. The popular theory is that the school education is not giving them what they want, so they would be better off by concentrating on competitive exams. Agninarayan Singh from Ratlam, MP, has been visiting coaching centres in Kota to collect brochures and choose the best centre for his son. He is also looking for schools that will provide his son a “dummy admission”. He says, “I have brought my son to Kota because it is very famous for JEE coaching. Schooling can be taken care of, he will get an attendance waiver in some schools here.”

Nobody is leaving any stone unturned in this town. Even schools are playing their part in creating an environment for students to focus on entrance exams. Coaching centres on their part schedule classes for Class XI-XII students only in the evening. A student who did not wish to be named revealed that some coaching centres even have “collaborations” with schools and assist students in getting attendance waiver. The student said, “Most attend school only for the lab sessions and skip classes otherwise.” When this reporter contacted a couple of schools in Kota under the pretext of getting her brother an admission and attendance waiver she was told that it could be ‘arranged’.


: Published in " indianexpress.com " 31 Mar 2012 10:49:10 AM IST