Private coaching institutes may finally see some regulation coming their way. The union HRD ministry has reportedly written to the state governments to regulate these institutes. "We have taken up with state governments to regulate the private coaching institutions in the interest of students and their overall development", Minister of State in HRD Ministry Mahendra Nath Pandey said in the Rajya Sabha.
Some of the state governments have started working on it. The Odisha government has drafted Odisha Coaching Institutes (Regulation) Bill, 2017 which would be introduced in the assembly soon. The rules mandate registration of all coaching centres in the state. In Bihar too, the government has asked coaching centres to register with the state administration. Manipur has also recently passed the Manipur Coaching Institute (Control and Regulation) Bill, 2017.
In February this year, hearing a PIL filed by the Students Federation of India (SFI), the Supreme court had said private coaching institutes need to be regulated.
The HRD ministry's action comes in the wake of a spate of incidents of student suicides, especially in Kota, known as the mecca of coaching in India.
In 2016, Devji M Patel, a Lok Sabha MP, came up with a private members bill for regulation of private coaching institutes which was not approved.
The bill stated that every year, roughly sixteen students commit suicide under pressure of examination in the country. In the year 2014, forty-five students committed suicide in the country.
According to the National Crime Record Bureau, there is 63.3 per cent rise in the number of suicides committed by youth in 2014 in comparison to the number of suicides committed in the year 2013. The series of suicides continued in the year 2015.
"According to the bureau, 40.17 per cent of the youth who committed suicide were below the age of 30 years out of which 17.2 per cent were girls. Therefore, there is an urgent need to enact a law to regulate the functioning of such private coaching centres in the country", noted the bill in its objectives page.
To curb the coaching menace, government has also come up with IIT-PAL (professor assisted learning) initiative. Under the programme, professors from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) will be providing coaching classes to engineering aspirants through DTH channels. Forty professors from various IITs have compiled 200 hours of lecture for each subject, covering the entire syllabus of Joint Entrance Examination (JEE).
