Why humiliating Coaching Institutes is perhaps not such a good idea

I heard Madam Nirmala Sitharaman saying that Coaching Institutes would be taxed at 18% "because they're not educational institutes".

While the technical explanation is that coaching players don't dole out degrees or school certificates, and hence can't be formally classified as "educational institutes", I think it's just bad logic and misplaced hate. I also believe (and quite sincerely) that the government needs to come out of the mindset that thinks it's "fashionable" to humiliate an industry which has only been born because the country really needed it. And still does.

Yes, the industry of coaching institutes only exists because India can't do without it. That's a fact.

The competition in India is just beyond extraordinary. While US has a population density of ~40 persons/Sq Km, China's is at ~150 - India is basically in a league of its own. We have about 500 persons/Sq Km.

This means we're over thrice as dense as China, over twelve times as dense as US, while having an economy which is less than 1/4th and 1/7th of those countries respectively. Life in India is constantly in the "hard mode". And the way to the top is quite brutal.

Enter coaching institutes. They provide what is perhaps the only way for a kid (and his entire family) to have a real shot at changing their lives. A shot at almost guarunteed upward mobility. A shot at zipping past the competition and getting heralded as "smart" for the rest of their lives.

By getting into an IIT, of course.

Now what's the fault of the coaching institutes here? Why does the government think it's okay to castigate them? After all, they're only serving the country that they inherited. They didn't create this situation, neither this society. All they did was democratised "advanced" learning, at a cost. They're not exactly in an easy business. It's an extraordinarily hard market which is hyper fixated on "results". If they don't perform, they perish. Then why chastise them?

India is such a country that if you read a success story on Economic Times TODAY, if the person is from an IIT, you'll know where he's from. But if he's not, they won't even mention the name of his college.

We brand IITs by consciously hiding the name of every other college.

In fact, I was recently talking to a very renowned entrepreneur/investor, and the conversation turned to how the startup funding landscape in India seems extremely biased towards IITs. You know what he said?

"Humne us samay mehnat ki thi. Ab tumhe mehnat karni hogi".

Can you believe it? So that 55 year old man felt it was completely okay for him (or the likes of him) to be favoured in the startup funding ecosystem TODAY, because he was an obedient student at age 16. And consquently, he also felt it was completely okay for me (or the likes of me) to struggle, because I wasn't.

While I don't blame him for his perspective or opinions. At all. Should our government be admonishing coaching institutes because they lead to "stress"? Come on! Give me a break.

Why humiliating Coaching Institutes is perhaps not such a good idea

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