Students on the Warpath against ‘Coaching Mafia’ in Bihar

It was nine in the night on February 8 – all seemed as usual in Patna’s Bazaar Samiti area famed for its coaching centres. At one corner of the most crowded crossroads, however, an unusual sight could be seen: two students held placards in their hands and were raising slogans, and were gradually joined by a few more students. Coaching centre operator Neeraj Singh had humiliated these students by tearing up their identity cards and throwing them out of class when they asked a question. These coaching institutions have a close nexus with political powers and they have hired goons – therefore it was unheard of for students to dare to challenge them. But that day, two students stood up to them – and students all Patna responded to this brave gesture by spilling out onto the streets.

Within half an hour, thousands of students collected at the crossroads, targeting first Neeraj Singh’s coaching institute and then other such institutes in the area. The students’ numbers kept swelling, and they then made their way to other parts of the State capital. In the morning of 9 February, students targeted coaching institutes at Musallahpur, Naya Tola, Lal Bag, and Ramna Road. Coaching institutes run by K Singh and S K Mishra, Kartar Coaching – all these symbols of commercialised education-shops were targeted by the students. A guard in the S K Mishra institute fired and killed a student Sachin Sharma (from Nalanda) on the spot. The killing made the students’ protests erupt in anger.

The police then unleashed brutal repression and terror, lathicharging students and severely injuring hundreds, who were then dumped in wards at PMCH hospital, where they received no treatment. A student Krishnakant Jha from Saharsa succumbed to injuries for lack of medical care. The police, desperate to suppress the students’ upsurge, beat up and intimidated students into leaving Patna.

The upsurge against these coaching institutes has not happened all of a sudden – what has come to the fore is the expression of long-simmering rage within students against commercialisation and sheer loot in the name of education. The episode has again exposed the reality behind the Nitish Government’s tall claims of ‘educational reforms.’ The fact is that a massive education business has mushroomed in the State capital, with a turnover of 1000 crore every year; and far from any government supervision or control, the whole exploitative business has protection and patronage of various ruling class parties. The ‘coaching industry’ is an extremely unscrupulous one – capitalising on students’ aspirations with faked statistics of successes in competitive exams, ads full of falsehoods, and baseless commendations procured by ruling politicians.

Nitish Kumar’s first response to the news of the upsurge was a flippant, “Such things keep happening in Bihar.” Subsequently, when the impact that the episode was having dawned on him, he went into damage control mode, hurriedly announcing that a Bill to regulate the coaching industry would be introduced in the next Assembly session and getting the Patna DM to invite student representatives for a discussion.

But weak and superficial measures cannot address the problem – the root of which lies in the government’s policy of promoting privatisation and commercialisation of education, which in turns forces students to compete for an ever-shrinking space in the education- and job-market.