The guardians keeping watch on Kota’s kids

When an 18-year-old student asked autorickshaw driver Badri bhaiya to stop midway across a flyover, there was something about the request that made the older man uneasy. Minutes earlier, he had overheard Deven* speaking anxiously on the phone about his disappointing performance in a recent mock test. Badri had been trained to recognise the warning signs of suicidal distress, and he sensed that this was not an ordinary conversation.Badri did not stop. Instead, he gently suggested that the boy get off a little farther ahead. He began asking about Deven’s hometown, his family and how he was settling into life in Kota. The questions were casual and chatty. All the while, Badri was steering his autorickshaw towards the district counselling centre. Once there, he introduced Deven to his “brother”, a trained counsellor who could help him.Elsewhere in the city, a housekeeping worker named Komal noticed that Aayushi*, an 18-year-old NEET aspirant, had been holed up in her room and not eaten or bathed in two days. She gently coaxed Aayushi into talking to her and found out that the teen had been living in fear and shame. A boy had allegedly threatened to circulate some obscene pictures online. Sensing trouble, Komal raised an alarm for help.Neither Badri nor Komal is a mental health professional. Yet, both recognised something that might easily have escaped notice. And in Kota, where more than 1.5 lakh students arrive each year to prepare for the fiercely competitive JEE and NEET examinations, that ability to notice may be among the most important skills the city’s residents are learning.Rs 10,000 crore machineSince the ’90s, the erstwhile industrial town has evolved into a Rs 10,000-crore conglomerate of coaching centres, star teachers, and students with dreams in their eyes. When coaching institutes reopened after Covid, the number of aspirants had grown to twice the usual number, according to Kota SP Tejaswini Gautam. But in the last couple of years, the sheen of the “topper-making machine” has worn off.Gautam identifies parental pressure to achieve high scores and difficulties in romantic relationships among the recurring factors behind the student suicide crisis. In 2023, 27 students died by suicide, a toll that forced the city to confront the human cost of an industry built around academic ambition.Faced with strong backlash, including court diktats, political and parental pressure, the year also marked a turning point in how the city responded.Breaking the cycleTravel through Kota, and the signs of a city struggling to protect its young are everywhere. Windows are secured with iron grilles, ceiling fans fitted with spring-loaded mechanisms designed to give way under excessive weight, and terraces are kept out of bounds. Yet, that has not stopped the toll.The authorities realised they needed a different strategy. “The worst year in Kota’s history was 2023. But it also pushed us to launch several interventions, and today, even the smallest signs are taken seriously,” Gautam says.The interventions — darwaze par dastak (knock on the door) — are based on the understanding that the community would have to step up if students were to be saved.Since 2023, about 22,000 people have undergone the QPR training (to question, persuade, refer), a suicide-prevention approach designed to teach ordinary citizens how to recognise warning signs, encourage someone to accept help, and connect them with professionals.The idea is both modest and ambitious. A student contemplating suicide may never walk into a counsellor’s office. But that student might encounter an autorickshaw driver, a security guard, a hostel manager, or a van driver.This is supported by a network of facilities including an SOS app, a round-the-clock helpline, a dedicated student cell, field officers, a back-end support team, and a technical unit. But perhaps the most revealing change is not technological. It is the sight of police officers, many of them women like ASI Sanju Sharma (in blue uniforms, not khaki which might scare students), in hostel mess halls and coaching centre canteens. They mingle with students and try to build enough trust that a child in difficulty might speak before a crisis deepens.Behind the sceneThe police diaries offer a glimpse of what that vigilance looks like in practice. Last Jan, for instance, a security guard at an apartment complex found an anonymous suicide note. He alerted the police-run student cell, setting off a search not for a suspect but for a young person who might be in danger.The team scoured the building, speaking to students and parents, even going as far as comparing handwriting samples. They identified the teen who was struggling emotionally and referred them for counselling.Coaching institutes too have been asked to step up. They employ trained counsellors who undergo refresher courses twice a year. The once-common practice of dividing students into batches according to their marks has been prohibited. Programmes to sensitise parents are mandatory. Music festivals, mindfulness, and stress-management workshops are being woven into everyday life.Even the ordinary routines of hostel life have acquired a new significance. Reception desks must record attendance twice a day; receptionists are expected to visit every room, strike a short conversation and take the tenant’s signature.“I usually ask if everything is going well or when they last spoke to their parents,” says Mukesh Parihar, a hostel manager.Mess workers are expected to account for every student at meal times. When someone fails to appear, the hostel manager must be informed and is expected to find out why by visiting the student, recording the reason and taking a signature.In a city where a young person’s struggles can remain invisible behind a closed door, even a missed dinner is now meant to prompt a question. Last week, when a student from Jharkhand failed to come down for dinner, the hostel manager went looking for him. He knocked repeatedly but got no response. Fearing something was wrong, he gained access to the student’s room through a window from an adjoining room.The student had attempted self-harm but was saved in the nick of time. The student will be sent home under Kota Returns, a programme launched in 2024 for students who are struggling to cope and considered at serious risk of suicide. Many are sent back to the care and support of their families each year.But even that is not always straightforward. “In some cases, parents refuse to come and pick them up. We intervene and send them back with a police officer,” says Gautam.Komal, the domestic worker-turned-rescuer, says, “Now that we are vigilant, we find at least two cases every month that we refer for counselling. Sometimes, students are just homesick, so we call their mothers and ask them to make a trip to Kota to spend time with their kids.”When help comes callingAt PhysicsWallah, Professor Nipun Mittal describes another shift. Counsellors visit classrooms, walk the corridors during breaks, strike up conversations, and hold group discussions in hostels. “We have broken the stigma attached to counselling,” he says.The pressures students carry are not always confined to examinations. For a 15-year-old arriving from a small town, Kota can represent a complete rearrangement of life: unfamiliar food, language or social environment, separation from parents, new friendships, different routines, and a demanding academic schedule. “A lot of new things at once can be overwhelming,” says Mittal.At Sanishtha Emotional Well-being Centre, an Allen-run initiative which offers free counselling, the scale of the effort is considerable. Dr Himanshu Sharma heads a team of 48 counsellors and 90 support staff, including telephone counsellors, outreach workers, and personnel trained to provide what he calls “emotional first aid”. In 2026, the team saved 47 lives.“Kota has spent decades teaching young people to crack some of the toughest examinations under enormous pressure. But Kota is also a microcosm of India, and there are lessons here that go well beyond its classrooms,” says Nitin Kukreja, CEO of Allen.He believes the city’s evolving system of spotting students in distress deserves closer attention. “Every case tells us something we missed. We study what went wrong, identify the gaps and try to close them before another student slips through. The goal is to get to zero.”Fresh hope?Meanwhile, after several rounds of counselling, Aayushi is back at her books, preparing for the upcoming NEET, and Deven, whose thoughts of self-harm persisted despite counselling, has been sent home to his parents in UP’s Alipur. Neither story comes with the certainty of a happy ending.Till Oct 2026, six students have died by suicide. For those trying to prevent the next death, the figure is a reminder that progress, however encouraging, remains fragile.Whether it is the autorickshaw driver who keeps chatting, the housekeeping worker who notices an untouched meal or the hostel manager who refuses to walk away from a locked door — none of them can guarantee what happens next. But together, they represent a change in what the city has begun to ask of itself.For years, Kota’s defining question was whether its students would make the cut. Increasingly, another question is being asked: who will be there to help them when they believe they cannot?You Can Also Check: Gold Rate in Jaipur | Silver Rate in Jaipur | Bank Holidays in Jaipur | Public Holidays in Jaipur | Jaipur AQI | Weather in Jaipur | Petrol Price in Jaipur | Diesel Price in Jaipur | CNG Price in Jaipur | LPG Price in JaipurStay updated with the latest Jaipur news. Download the TOI App.