Letter from Kolkata: It’s Summer But School’s Not Out

In India the pressure to get onto the information superhighway is intense, and doing well in school and beyond requires going to coaching centers year round. The results of this competitive drive can be deadly.

New America Media, News Feature, Sandip Roy, Posted: Jun 06, 2007

KOLKATA -- It’s summer vacation in India but five days a week, my nephew gulps down his breakfast and heads out into the sticky 98 degree morning glare, dragging a backpack full of mathematics and science books. There’s no school but that just means more time for private tutors. He’s barely thirteen but in the exam-oriented Indian culture, there is no time to waste.

The rest of the world admires India for generating one of the highest numbers of English-proficient graduates in the world, well-poised to take on at least the back end of the information technology world. In 2004-05 India churned out 464,743 engineering graduates, almost a third of who were computer engineers. The United States produced about 70,000. All of Europe managed around 100,000.

But in India the pressure to get onto the information (and career) superhighway is intense. And sometimes it yields deadly results. On April 30, a class VII student from North Kolkata went missing soon after the results of his annual examinations were announced. He had failed. He was eventually tracked down in Mumbai but at least 18 children went missing from Kolkata between April 26 and May 3. Academic pressure is a big reason, say Kolkata police.

May and June are the cruelest months of the year because of the sweltering temperatures. But for hundreds of thousands of students taking their school-leaving and college-entrance exams these months are even more cruel. This is the time all the results come out.

Once vendors ran down through the sleepy streets at the crack of dawn shouting “Gazette, gazette.” You cornered one and tracked down your results, paying a little bonus, maybe ten rupees, if you had done well. Now it all appears online but the stomach-churning tension is exponentially higher. One misstep can mean a wrong turn into a professional blind alley.

Demand is high and slots are few. In Kolkata alone, 275,000 students took the Class XII school-leaving examination this year. But there are only 100,000 seats in the colleges around Kolkata. Seats for coveted fields like computer science and information technology are even fewer. 100,894 students competed in the Joint Entrance Engineering (JEE) examination for the 17,000 seats in engineering colleges across the state of West Bengal. Students have to take a battery of admission tests hoping they’ll get lucky somewhere.

Once upon a time the big hurdle was getting your kid into one of the elite city schools like the missionary schools. If they got into one at the age of six, parents would heave a sigh of relief. Their children would be set for the next 10-12 years. No longer. The name brand city schools haven’t even made the top 10 of the JEE results. Most of the toppers come from the district schools. Six of the top 10 come from small towns. The not-so-secret weapon – specialized coaching centers. They are the only ones laughing all the way to the bank. Newspapers carry full-page ads of scores of specialized coaching centers that have mushroomed across the country, each one promising success in one competitive exam or another.

Ankush Bajoria, who ranked fifth in the JEE, went to a coaching center that has a 100 percent success rate with the IIT-JEE exams. Abhisek Rai who topped the medical exams said he studies 10 hours a day for his exams.

Newspapers breathlessly publish the details of study habits and private tutor counts as if they are dispensing diet hints or stock tips. Subhasish Das, JEE champion, has five tutors according to The Times of India. Priyadarshini Banerjee who topped the national ISC school leaving examinations with a 98.75 percent score told The Telegraph that her formula for success was five private tutors and studying six to eight hours a day. Some even have more than one tutor for one subject.

For those who cannot land a college of their choice, the options look grim. Many will choose to “waste” a year studying physics or economics and prepping for next year’s engineering examinations. It’s become such a trend that some colleges scheduled their annual exams on the same day as the engineering entrance examinations just to prevent this “double-dipping.”

Kolkata University, faced with a glut of hungry students, promises to create more “institutions of excellence” but it is still bogged down in “comprehensive policy” studies. For now, parents will just have to scour the papers to find out which coaching centers Subhasish and Abhishek and Priyadarshini went to.

As for my nephew, right now he is stressed about finishing his mathematics homework, his environmental project on natural resources, his computer project, and spelling quizzes (“baccalaureate” and “facsimile”). When I ask him what subject he likes the most he looks at me blankly and says, “Nothing.” Then he says, “English, that’s what I have to study the least for.” But boys hoping for good careers need much more than English. He’ll need to do well in mathematics and the sciences and computers. Soon his parents too will be looking at coaching centers and a battalion of private tutors with good references to make sure he doesn’t get left behind. For now he’s just happy it’s his summer holiday and he can get up at 8 a.m. instead of his usual 5:30 a.m.

Other Recent Readings of Interest

• The Perils of Academia for Asians
  By Andrew Lam, New America Media
  IFor many Asian immigrants, these dreams of academic success have survived long journeys and refugee camps. Yet there are dark perils that run along the same path to achievement.

NAM editor Sandip Roy is the host of the radio show Up Front on KALW 91.7 FM.