In one of the most haunting scenes from the Kota Factory series, a boy named Vaibhav collapses in exhaustion after hours of solving equations in his cramped hostel room. The white walls are bare, the fluorescent tube light flickers, and outside his window, dozens of other teenagers are awake, clinging to books, their faces pale under the same sterile glow. For a brief moment, the camera lingers on his blank stare. After all these years of hard work, Vaibhav has forgotten the very reason why he began studying in the first place.

The scene, though fictional, captures a truth more devastating than any exam result could be. It speaks volumes about how our education system is draining its children long before it ever empowers them.

Across India, from Kota to Kottayam, from Patna to Pune, millions of students wake before dawn to chase a single dream—cracking an entrance exam that promises security, prestige, and a better life. But for far too many, this pursuit has become a trap. Behind those flashy photographs and advertisements that show the success of the few who crack these exams lie stories of sleepless nights, silent tears, and, far too often, young lives cut short.

Over the past decade, India has seen an alarming 65 per cent increase in suicides among students, reaching a record 13,892 deaths in 2023—nearly 38 students every single day. That is one every 38 minutes. It is no longer an education crisis; it is a national emergency. These numbers come from the recent NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau) report.

From an ITI student who was found hanging in a Sambalpur hotel to school children in Palghar, a college student in Nellore, and countless others whose stories never make the news, what we see is the cumulative effect of a culture that glorifies achievement over survival. The Supreme Court's recent warning to IITs, IIMs, and other premier institutions over rising student suicides was not merely a reprimand; it was an indictment of a system that has normalised suffering as the price of success. When our brightest campuses become breeding grounds for anxiety and despair, we must ask ourselves: what are we really aiming for? What purpose does our education serve when hundreds of thousands of graduates are not even able to find gainful employment after all the toil it demands?

For decades, our entrance exams, such as the JEE, NEET, CAT, CLAT, and others, have been regarded as the ultimate test of merit. They are not just crucial for college admissions; they are the deciding factors for self-worth, family pride, and social mobility. This notion of merit drives millions to coaching hubs like Kota, where education resembles a conveyor belt more than a classroom.

Students live in hostels barely big enough for a bed and desk, study 12 to 14 hours a day, and are trained to chase patterns, not ideas. And when they stumble, what they face is gossip, judgment, and unbearable loneliness. This has also begun to affect school education.

Increasingly, we have seen the rise of "dummy schools," where children are enrolled solely to meet attendance requirements and are allowed to forgo regular classes entirely while devoting themselves full-time to coaching. The school becomes merely a checkbox on paper, not a place of learning. Students enrolled in such schools lose out not only on holistic learning but on friendship, art, play, and perspective. They are trained to solve pre-designed problems to get through entrance exams, not to navigate real-life issues.

And all this comes at a substantial financial burden for the parents. India's coaching industry is estimated to be worth over ?60,000 crores. Families routinely spend ?1.5 to ?3.5 lakh a year, sometimes mortgaging their assets, to give their children a chance at the "top" institutions. And when this kind of money is shelled out from their prized possessions, the message is clear to the child: "This is your one chance. Failure is not an option." For a teenager, that weight can feel unbearable.

Ironically, a recent report titled "Unstop Talent Report" shows that over 80 per cent of engineering graduates are either unemployed or working in jobs unrelated to their field. Only about eight per cent end up getting core engineering positions. Even for those who make it to elite institutions, the reward is often a sense of disillusionment. The promise of opportunity has been replaced by shocking realities, such as unemployment and unemployability, characterised by poor faculty, outdated curricula, and an employment market that does not match their training. The result is a generation of youth caught between over-qualification and underemployment, unmet expectations and unclear futures, which fuels mental health issues.

Unfortunately, with less than one psychiatrist per 100,000 people, we are utterly unprepared for this invisible, highly toxic epidemic. At a time when one out of five adolescents suffers from depression and anxiety, most schools and colleges either lack counsellors altogether or employ one overworked professional for thousands of students. Teachers are not trained to recognise distress. Parents, often under their own social and economic pressures, mistake symptoms for laziness or rebellion. And in a society where success is celebrated but struggle is stigmatised, asking for help becomes an act of shame.

Beyond individual families, our education system has also failed our youth. The Supreme Court's intervention is a wake-up call, but real change requires introspection across all levels of the system. IITs and IIMs, for all their global prestige, remain largely indifferent to the emotional toll of their rigour. Academic excellence without emotional intelligence is brittle; it produces achievers who cannot cope with failure.

Government efforts, such as the "Manodarpan" initiative under the National Education Policy 2020, are a step forward but far from sufficient. Policies cannot undo decades of cultural conditioning that equate marks with worth and obedience with virtue. What India needs is not just counselling but a reimagining of education itself, one that redefines success, reclaims joy, and rebalances ambition with empathy.

Schools cannot be allowed to devolve into mere buildings that merely feed the coaching industry. Attendance must mean engagement, not paperwork. A genuine classroom must return to being a space for curiosity, collaboration, ideation, and creativity. Curricula should integrate life skills, mindfulness, and emotional literacy alongside mathematics and science. Exams, too, must evolve to assess understanding rather than memorisation.

At the college level, institutions must make mental health an institutional priority, not an afterthought. Every university should have well-funded counselling centres, trained professionals, and peer-support networks. Faculty should receive training to recognise early signs of distress and foster psychologically safe environments. Students should be encouraged in community engagement, creativity, and resilience, in addition to academic performance. In short, empathy should be treated as a skill, not a slogan.

Parents and families must shoulder their share of responsibility. The dream of a stable, respectable career is understandable, but it must not come at the cost of a child's peace of mind. The way we respond to their failures shapes their self-worth far more than any exam result.

Above all, as a society, we must confront a hard truth: our obsession with entrance exams is a reflection of our insecurity, not our ambition. We measure intellect by ranks because we distrust creativity; we glorify toppers because we fear uncertainty. But the future, especially in an age of automation, AI, and global collaboration, will not belong to rote learners. It will belong to those who can think critically, adapt empathetically, and imagine boldly—skills that our current system crushes.

The tragedy of India's education system is not that it demands excellence, but that it defines excellence so narrowly. A system that produces toppers, not thinkers; coders, not creators; and graduates, not citizens, is not a system that serves its purpose. Every suicide, every silent dropout, every anxious teenager represents not just personal pain but a collective failure of a social contract that promised opportunity through education and delivered only exhaustion.

It is time to rewrite that contract. We must teach our children not just to compete, but to care for themselves, for others, and for the world they will inherit. The cost of inaction is already being counted in obituaries. The next generation deserves better than a life measured by mark-sheets and memorial posts.

For every Vaibhav in a dimly lit hostel room, for every unnamed student whose potential ended in silence, the message must now be clear: no exam, no rank, and no institution is worth a life. It is high time this story changed, and pressure was replaced with purpose. If we continue to equate education with marks and ranks, we will lose our students and our future, too.

Beyond this, we need to re-examine our system of entrance exams. What purpose do these exams serve? Are they assessing capabilities, or ruining lives, or generating money for the privileged few who promise brighter futures? Why can't board exam scores be sufficient for getting admission into higher studies? And when an unemployed engineer is rejected from a job or laid off for lacking skills, should we not question what kind of education we are providing after extracting lakhs of rupees from families?

These questions are certainly uncomfortable. But they must be asked and answered.