Tuition town

BATHINDA has never been known for academics. But Punjab8217;s wild west is gradually acquiring a scholarly air. Education has become a prospering business and professional coaching is boosting local economy.

Until recently, Bathinda was known more for its drug problems and political upheavals. Today it is Punjab8217;s professional coaching capital. It has about 100 coaching centres and hosts over 5,000 medical and engineering college aspirants.

8216;8216;Though this area was educationally backward in the past, it has come around,8217;8217; says B. Kapila, a Chemistry teacher who quit and is now with a professional coaching centre.

8216;8216;Bathinda is running on the money being pumped in by us,8217;8217; says Rahul who migrated from Ludhiana to Bathinda in search of better education. A three to six months course generally costs anything between Rs 15,000 and Rs 30,000. Students pay anything between Rs 1 and 2 lakh for coaching for medical colleges. Touted as a 100 crore per annum industry, professional coaching has also given birth to many side industries. Private homes and hotels are only to happy to accommodate the ever increasing rush of outstation students. Almost every house resembles a motel and rooms are rented out for princely sums. Hundreds of paying guests accommodation have come up in Bathinda. Says P.C. Baghi, an oldtimer in the town: 8216;8216;Sometimes we get a feeling that this town houses more outsiders thanks to the coaching centres that have a very good advertisement strategy.8217;8217;

Restaurants are doing good business and stationery and books sales have reported a three-fold increase in the past two years. 8216;8216;Professional coaching is an industry and Bathinda students get the top most positions,8217;8217; says Naresh Bhardwaj who runs Regional Coaching Centre.

Bathinda students are taking top positions in medical college exams across India. An equal number of the city8217;s students make it to engineering colleges.

8216;8216;While students earlier used to go to Kota, which was known for sending youngsters to the best professional institutes in India, now the trend is reversing in favour of us,8217;8217; says Ishwinder Singh, director of the local branch of Career Point Kota, which recently opened a branch in Bathinda.

So what8217;s behind the Bathinda success story? In the past, some of the top positions in the most challenging professional examinations have gone to students coached in Bathinda. These include the Punjab Pre-Medical Test PMT in 2001, the top three positions in Punjab Combined Entrance Test CET for engineering entrance exams this year and the second and fourth 2nd positions among the first 40 ranks in the All-India CBSE Medical Entrance Exam in 2003.

The statistics have sparked off a migration to the city from other parts of Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Rajasthan and even Delhi. Gunjan Dalal, Monika and Uma are cases in point. The three have come all the way from Panipat to Bathinda to seek 8216;8216;focused coaching8217;8217;. 8216;8216;Our parents preferred to send us here rather than to Delhi as Bathinda has the reputation of good results, teachers and coaching,8217;8217; says Gunjan, who adds that another reason for choosing Bathinda was because it8217;s said to be a safe town. Ankita Gupta from Dabwali also feels that Bathinda is a great place to study as it doesn8217;t have many of the distractions that are present in big cities.

But there8217;s another side to the boom. Suspecting that many government teachers were engaged in private coaching, the Punjab Vigilance Bureau, on May 15 last year, cracked down on many teachers all over Punjab. Some teachers of the Government College were caught red-handed while giving tuitions to at least 200 students.

Though most teachers see the coaching centres boom as a positive trend, they are apprehensive that quantity may soon snuff out quality. Says K.L. Singhal, who quit his teaching job a few years ago: 8216;8216;The decline has already started as students coming up in large numbers end up getting poor coaching at the hands of unprofessional teachers.8217;8217;

But coaching centres have a backup plan. Many are hiring ad agencies to turn around their sagging image.