From Pusa Road To Beauracracy1984 – Stepping into the city of Delhi, I settled down in Karol Bagh. The early morning walk was indeed a pleasure. Starting from one end of the Pusa Road, walking to the other end till the Springdale school and return to my residence, I found there was enough Oxygen to breathe and with no air or noise pollution, thanks to the minimal number of vehicles that haunted the road, except for the school buses. one could list a number of schools that lined up along the road that gave a festive look with bright smiling children running towards the school from their buses. I wondered what a quiet atmosphere the schools had for effective learning.
2023- Two days before when I had to visit the same area and walked along the same road, most schools were in the hideout. A large number of business centres had cropped up all along the road over the years. Most surprisingly, a beeline of coaching centres for the IAS examinations were sporting their capabilities to gravitate the learners. I had a question in my mind- whether this place has become a “Mini Kota” for preparing the learners for these competitive examinations.
This indeed provoked my thoughts with the following questions.
1. The coaching industry is turning several million rupees across the country and is growing just because it creates oftentimes an artificial need and market of its own.
2. The universe of the coaching industry from pre-primary classes to the highest level of executive opportunities is indeed amazing and narrates the length of its scale.
3. The diversity of its operation from simple classroom coaching needs to examinations of the boards, talent examination, entrance examinations to all top-heavy institutions of engineering, medicine, management, talent search examinations, recruitment examinations and those that lead to administrative services indicates both the business opportunities and the rat-race in the social dynamics.
4. A scrutiny of the services rendered by many in these sectors leaves much to be desired, as the quality of support and the tools used by them are not really of the required standards or quality. Some of these institutions only play with the anxiety, fear, need and greed of the community that is engaged in these exercises.
5. It also raises the question whether any ‘learning package’ would help or be good enough to meet the needs of the learners to get qualified with certain basic sense of surety.
6. In many centers, only a few faculty have either a deep understanding of what they are doing or intend to do, while others are people with intelligence and common sense than with clarity, confidence or comfort. In many cases, those who teach have neither experience nor clarity about the professions about which they are professing.
7. While many of these high-level examinations call for extended learning and ‘freedom of learning,”, whether the linearity of approach in content delivery is sufficient to meet the real needs of professions like IAS?
8. It also raises a question whether the agencies running these examinations, whether at Government level or otherwise, do need to reconsider their existing patterns of assessment to bring some non-routine approaches to examination, evaluation and selection.
9. At the societal level, such commercial institution may be doing a great job of facilitating the unreached and the needy, their expertise in preparing the participants for a larger purpose beyond the defined syllabus for the examination, leaves one in serious doubts.
10. It is also worth debating on what kind of polarization these institutions would create in the mindsets of the future managers of bureaucracy? One is not even aware whether there are any specifications to let these industries run their show, prescribing qualifications or expertise?
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