What’s with parallel education in the name of coaching going on in India?
The educational landscape has shifted from a foundation of learning to a "zombie factory" fueled by a parallel system of rogue coaching institutes. We have schools, colleges, and universities—the established pillars of our society—yet we’ve allowed a shadow industry to rise and compete with the very core of our education system. When children as young as 11 or 12 are funneled into centers like Allen, Aakash, or FIITJEE to "prepare" for life a decade away, we have to ask: who decided this was necessary, and at what cost?
The "level playing field" in our country is officially dead. This "pay-to-play" model inherently discriminates against the underprivileged; how can a child from a poor family ever hope to compete against peers backed by premium, high-priced modules? This isn't just about extra help; it’s a systematic poaching of our best teachers and a hollowed-out school system. If the material these institutes provide is so revolutionary, why is it absent from our schools? Why are we allowing our formal institutions to underperform—perhaps even deliberately—so that a parallel path of profiteering can flourish?
The reasons for this boom are a painful reflection of our social reality:
Institutional Decay: Understaffed and underperforming schools create a vacuum for-profit centers to fill.
The Parental Trap: A mix of peer pressure, social status, and a genuine inability or unwillingness of parents to support complex modern curriculums.
The Pressure Cooker: A forced way of engaging children who might otherwise "while away" their time, resulting in kids being "cooked" from morning until evening.
Lack of Will: A complete absence of political will to regulate an industry that trades childhood playtime for a grueling academic grind.
We are seeing a rise in "unseen and unheard" mental and physical health problems in our youth, and it’s no wonder. While schools are often bound by strict regulations, these "sick institutes" are free to plaster our newspapers with filthy advertisements. These rows of photos featuring bespectacled kids—each one a trophy used to outdo the other—are pushing our future generation into a hellhole of comparison and exhaustion.
Nepal recently took the bold step of banning coaching institutions to protect the integrity of their formal education. Why are we moving in the opposite direction? We are trading well-rounded citizens for exhausted test-takers. We must stop this commodification of childhood and the aggressive commercialization of learning. If we don’t demand a return to high-quality, inclusive school education, we are simply watching our country become a factory for the hollowed-out. It has to stop before the damage to our future generation is permanent.