For the 300,000 students who flock to Kota every year, this hot, dusty city in the Indian state of Rajasthan is a pressure cooker of performance, where 18 hours of study a day is common and where your exam marks are everything. Some will become India’s next generation of doctors and engineers; but for others, it will break them.
Kota has become known in recent decades as India’s “coaching capital”, where almost a dozen specialist institutes have sprung up offering intensive courses to prepare students for the highly competitive exams, either for medicine or engineering college. With 65% of India’s population of 1.4 billion people below the age of 35 and more young people pursuing higher education than anytime in its history, the stakes – and competition – have never been higher.
