The Kota story: Are students crippled with the stress, fear of failure?

A matter of life and death: Psychologists are in demand as the Kota system of rankers and bankers creates more foes than friends. Is there a way out of the pressure cooker?

On a hot afternoon, inside the main building of Allen Academy, the largest coaching institute in Kota, a large screen facing a row of seats for visitors shows a hapless Charlie Chaplin being fed unsuccessfully by a machine. The clip from Modern Times is an indictment of blind mechanisation.

Such comic relief in the sombre setting escapes the notice of the thousands of preoccupied students who mechanically flit in and out of classrooms as they prepare to crack two of India’s toughest academic tests — the Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) and the pre-medical National Eligibility cum Entrance