Students or Aspirants? Insights from an Ethnography of the Civil Services Exam Coaching Culture in New Delhi
Debanshu Panwar
Doctoral Researcher, Sociology
Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi
Trigger Warning: This article includes descriptions of multiple unnatural deaths
It was the first day of my ethnographic fieldwork on 31st July, 2024, I deboarded the metro at the “Drishti IAS Karol Bagh” Metro Station, as did many others along with me, most of them would have been civil service examination (CSE) aspirants. It is one of those metro stations in Delhi, where the platforms become chaotic and crowded as soon as the metro doors open, like Rajiv Chowk, Hauz Khas, and several others. The deboarding passengers there are almost like a swarm of bees waiting to feed on the unlimited flowers of knowledge available at the numerous gardens of the coaching industry and formal education in Karol Bagh and Old Rajinder Nagar (ORN). When I deboarded the metro, I became one of the bees; it almost felt like I was back in the same rat race that I had quit (probably like many others) a few years ago. This was nothing new to me.
My research centred around the Union Public Services Civil (UPSC) exam coaching economy and culture in Karol Bagh and Rajinder Nagar in Delhi, where I conducted ethnographic fieldwork for my doctoral thesis. I also have an auto-ethnographic experience of being an aspirant for a year in the same field. This has been a challenge since I started my PhD journey, as getting rid of the psyche/anger/frustration of a failed aspirant takes time, I believe. One of the central arguments of my research is that even though the aspirants need to study a lot, they are not regular students, but much more than that. Even though there is considerable competition among school and college students, educational institutions ideally operate on a mission to educate students by imparting knowledge, skills, and values to foster intellectual growth for national development. Whereas, the identity of aspirants and the civil service coaching culture are constructed by sheer competition and middle class aspirations.
What was new was the sudden and increased attention that my field and these coaching institutes were getting, from the print media and social media accounts on X, YouTube and Instagram, because on 27th July, 2024, three UPSC aspirants died due to drowning in the basement of one of the most reputed coaching institutes in ORN (TNN, 2024). Angered aspirants resorted to a protest. Unlike previous protests by the aspirants that revolved around the issues of the exam and recruitment, this time it was about the precarious nature of the everyday life of the aspirants in my field. UPSC coaching and the aspirants had become one of the major topics of discussion and gossip in Delhi. I decided to participate in the protest as a part of my fieldwork, although, given the history of student protests in Delhi, there was a constant fear in my mind that I would be returning home with bruises on my body caused by the laathis (batons) of Delhi Police or the Centre Reserve Police Force (CRPF). Surprisingly, there was not even a single instance of lathi charge or police brutality throughout the weeks-long protest.
The aspirant protestors blocked the Bada Bazaar Road by squatting together in huge numbers. I heard one of the local bystanders, a middle-aged man, explaining to his friend:
“iss awastha ko theek karne ke liye open heart surgery lagegi, aur doctor ilaaj karne ke liye raazi nahi hai, hum toh chalees saal se dekh rahe hain…”.
(Translation: Fixing the terrible infrastructure situation would require an ‘open heart surgery’, but the doctor is unwilling to do it, which we’ve witnessed for the last 40 years.)
He was trying to convey to his friend how he has witnessed such flooding due to infrastructural failures for ages, which would require structural changes, which the state does not want to do. While walking towards the main protest site, right outside the coaching institute where it all happened, there were barricades set up by the Delhi Police, where I was asked to prove that I was an aspirant. Somehow, I managed to log in to the student account of the mobile application of the coaching institute I visited in 2019. As I entered, I heard a slogan that I was not expecting.
“Dilli Police, I love you!”
Amidst an atmosphere of anger, chaos, and fear, there was a smile on the faces of police officers and the bystanders witnessing the protest. Quite an innovative protest, I thought. These aspirants are astute, intelligent, and well-read about their ‘fundamental rights’, the Indian law and bureaucracy, which they must be to succeed in this field. Protestors were not just angry; many of them were also scared and anxious about their well-being because of the brutal nature of the deaths of their fellow aspirants. I heard one of the protestors telling his friend that :
“in saari cheezon ki wajah se padhai mei bhi mann nahi lag raha…”.
(Translation: It is tough to focus on my studies with all this going around.)
A few days later, after the protest came to an end, on 18th September, it rained. It was one of those drizzles that won’t make one wet even if they were outside, but if such rain pours down for several hours, it can be detrimental for old, fragile buildings. Sadly, one such building, which housed migrant labourers in Karol Bagh, collapsed on 18th September, resulting in 4 deaths (one more than the official number of deaths in the basement) and 14 injuries (Harsh, 2024). Are the lives of migrant labourers not as important/precious as the aspirants? Where is the outrage now? I wondered. Can we assert here that the migrant labourers belong to what Partha Chatterjee (2011) termed as ‘Political Society’, and on the other hand, do the aspirants belong to ‘civil society’? Aspirants, through their protest, were still able to bring out a few changes in the local infrastructure of Old Rajinder Nagar. They collectively compelled the local authorities to repair and renovate the drainage system in ORN. CSE aspirants who now constitute a significant part of ORN’s population collectively possess a voice and agency even though they don’t vote as ordinary citizens during elections.
I met my first respondent in the Karol Bagh metro station elevator. I knew he was an aspirant, as he was wearing a bag sponsored by a reputed coaching institute, still, in order to strike a conversation, I asked him:
“Aspirant ho?” (Translation: Are you an aspirant?)
He nodded, signalling a yes after a slight pause. He seemed to be in a hurry.
“Mains de rahe ho iss saal?” I asked him, and later I realised that it was a stupid question. (Translation: Will you write the mains examination this year?)
“Nahi”, he replied. (Translation: No)
“Koi baat nahi, next year hopefully”, I tried to console him, but I had already made him go through the failure of being unable to clear the prelims exam, which I later realised. (Translation: It’s alright! Next year, hopefully!)
“Aur aap kahan se kar rahe ho coaching?” he asked, perhaps because even after years of quitting to be an aspirant, I still looked like one. (Translation: Which coaching classes are you attending?)
“Maine 2019 mei coaching li thi”, I replied. (Translation: I attended coaching classes back in 2019.)
“Tab se yahin ho?” he asked. (Translation: Have you been here since then?). It felt like it was coming as a comeback from his side; it was his turn now to embarrass me.
Then I explained what I was doing there, he wished me luck, and we both parted ways.
This conversation not only made me realise that many aspirants may be going through a lot of frustration, but also that I needed to be better at striking conversations as a researcher and try not to harm anyone’s feelings. The uncanny small talk reminded me of all the frustration, anxiety, uncertainty, and hard work that I had also gone through after multiple failed attempts in the same arena. My friends and family who knew about my research and fieldwork suggested that I should not visit my field on a rainy day. I had mixed feelings on the first day of my fieldwork, a mix of enthusiasm that I could finally conduct my research and anxiety about being in an area where the four aspirants had died within a week. I was also disappointed that a lot of things about my field were already out in the media; it was I who was supposed to tell the world about all that! It felt like a coincidence. Why did it all have to happen right now? I wondered.
What this article tries to assert is that CSE aspirants in Karol Bagh and Rajinder Nagar are not just competitors in an exam with unrealistically low rates of success which makes them go through frustration and anxiety, rather, perhaps because of the nature of the exam, what its syllabus entails, and what they aspire to become in future, they have somehow collectively become active agents of change in the region, who collectively possess an agency and who’s voices are not left unheard. The fact that there was no lathi charge or major incidents of police brutality during the protest, even after the aspirants had blocked the Bada Bazaar Road for a week or two reflects the psyche of the state and how the state wants to treat these aspirants. Is it because the aspirants, at least a few, will become government employees in the future? Or perhaps the state wants the coaching industry to flourish even though no law regulates these coaching institutes.
Bio: Debanshu is a doctoral researcher at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi, who is presently working on the Civil Services Examination (CSE) coaching industry. His ethnographic fieldwork for the doctoral thesis is based in Karol Bagh and Rajinder Nagar in Delhi.
References
Chatterjee, P. (2011). Lineages of political society: Studies in postcolonial democracy. Columbia University Press.
Harsh, H. (2024, 19th September). Karol Bagh building collapse: ‘He wanted to provide mother, sister a happy life’, says family of 12-year-old victim. The Indian Express, https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/karol-bagh-building-collapse-he-wanted-to-provide-mother-sister-a-happy-life-says-family-of-12-year-old-victim-9575273/
TNN (2024, 28th July). 3 UPSC aspirants drown in Delhi coaching centre: Poor Drainage, lack of desilting cited as likely causes, Times of India, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/3-upsc-aspirants-drown-in-delhi-coaching-centre-poor-drainage-lack-of-desilting-cited-as-likely-causes/articleshow/112073926.cms