In India’s national capital, three civil services aspirants lost their lives due to the criminal negligence of the coaching owners, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and the Delhi government. The UPSC aspirants who chose Delhi as their runway to fly high for success, drowned in the failures of the local government, greed, and lies of coaching mafias.
On 27th July 2024, three aspiring civil servants— Shreya Yadav from Uttar Pradesh, Tanya Soni from Telangana, and Navin Dalwin from Kerala—lost their lives after heavy rain in Delhi caused the basement of a building that housed a tutoring centre to flood. The tragic incident transpired at the library basement of Rau’s IAS Study Circle in the Old Rajinder Nagar area.
The death of these students, which is no less than a murder, has sparked a nationwide debate and outrage over how and why the students in Delhi’s coaching hubs are being made to live in deplorable conditions. The people want to know how the coaching mafias have been operating in the national capital with impunity and why it took the death of three young students for the Delhi government to wake up from hibernation.
There has been perpetual criminal negligence on the part of the Delhi government and AAP-controlled MCD. Even before the horrifying death of the three UPSC aspirants in Rau’s IAS Study Circle, another UPSC aspirant Neelesh Rai was returning to his room through a waterlogged street where he died from electrocution. The 26-year-old youth was set to write his mains exam. A fire also broke out three months ago in one of Old Rajender Nagar’s hostel buildings.
Ruling AAP plays its usual blame game
Meanwhile, the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is busy shirking responsibility and avoiding accountability in the face of such incidents since it has been AAP’s modus operandi. Following its tried and tested tactics, the Aam Aadmi Party has resorted to blaming the Delhi Lieutenant Governor and the Bharatiya Janata Party. The visuals of AAP leaders raising slogans like “L-G ko barkhast karo”, “Chhatron ki maut ke liye BJP zimmedar” etc have triggered outrage. The people are chastising AAP over their audacity to blame the opposition and L-G when Delhi has an AAP Chief Minister, AAP government, AAP Mayor and even the local MLA is from AAP.
Clearly, AAP loves to behave like a government when things are slightly right and behave like opposition when faced with challenges and criticism. Not much time has passed since AAP government ministers sat on ‘Dharna’ when the city was grappling with water crisis caused by tanker mafias.
#WATCH | Delhi: Old Rajinder Nagar incident | AAP leaders protest outside the Parliament over the Old Rajinder Nagar incident pic.twitter.com/tDjkDSnRlP
— ANI (@ANI) July 30, 2024
Amidst the public outrage and on-ground student protests, the authorities are under immense pressure to take action. The Delhi Police has arrested five people including four co-owners of the basement of a four-storeyed building where three civil services aspirants died due to flooding, and one SUV driver. The SUV driver’s arrest triggered backlash as people questioned the misplaced priorities of the authorities as the MCD officials, local AAP MLA Durgesh Pathak, and the local corporator walked free while the SUV driver Manuj Kathuria has been sent into 14 days custody for “fast driving” and “damaging gate” of Rau’s IAS coaching.
3 lost their lives in the #rauias tragedy. Illegal basements turned #libraries flouted safety laws. The system blames the driver driving in that area for floods, yet the Mayor, MLA, and Corporator walk free.
— Naimisha (ନୈମିଷା) 🇮🇳 (@SpeakNaimisha) July 30, 2024
By that logic, should Indra Dev be arrested for rain?
On @IndiaToday pic.twitter.com/OfMxXza5eT
Illegal basements pushing the future of India into the chasm of mental torture and death
In Delhi, several coaching centres operate out of illegally constructed buildings, often modifying basements and other spaces into classrooms without adhering to safety regulations. To no surprise, these spaces are poorly ventilated without proper exits, and are not equipped to handle emergencies like flooding as seen in Rau’s IAS coaching’s case. The tragic incident at Rau’s IAS Study Circle is a glaring example of the dangers posed by such illegal constructions.
You must have come across the Instagram reels or YouTube shorts featuring UPSC educators giving motivational speeches, encouraging students to go all out for their civil services dream. They are often seen on podcasts voicing their opinion on student-related issues and sometimes go overboard in doing so. However, such teachers, including Dristi IAS owner Vikas Divyakirti, have been eerily silent on the incident of the death of three UPSC aspirants in Rau’s IAS coaching basement. However, an apparent reason behind the hypocritical silence can be understood from the fact that the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) sealed the basement of the Drishti IAS, located in Mukherjee Nagar in North-West Delhi. It has come to light that the UPSC coaching institute, owned by Vikas Divyakirti, had been illegally using the basement of the building as a study centre.
#UPSC #Aspirants #Delhi #ORN pic.twitter.com/l4WjbHHRsI
— Ajay 🇮🇳 (@ajy_45) July 30, 2024
On the 29th of July, UPSC aspirants were seen protesting outside the building of Drishti IAS in Delhi. The enraged students came up with creative and hard-hitting slogans against Divyakirti and even created a “missing” poster taking a swipe at his silence on this issue. Similarly, students are also looking for history teacher Avadh Ojha who used to tell stories of hooliganism in his student life to UPSC aspirants.
अवध ओझा और विकास दिव्यकीर्ती सर के लिए ये दो तस्वीरें सोशल मीडिया पर खूब वायरल है।
— Mukesh Gurjar Sikar (@MukeshGurjarkdl) July 30, 2024
आपका इन तस्वीरों को लेकर क्या विचार है और ये क्यों वायरल है?#अवध_ओझा #विकास_दिव्यकीर्ति pic.twitter.com/kf7MSlPwpd
The negligence on the part of MCD authorities was despite a student named Kishor Singh Kushwah’s complaint about the illegal use of basements as study centres and libraries by a dozen coaching centres in South Patel and Old Rajinder Nagar a month before the tragic death of the three students. He had warned of the possibility of a major accident.
Despite being flagged to MCD on 3 different occasions, the AAP-controlled civic body did not act in time. It was only after the death of 3 UPSC aspirants on 27th July that the MCD swung into action and sealed 20 coaching centres for violation of rules.
Lies, exploitation and the stifling of young dreams by the ‘coaching mafias’
The exploitation of UPSC aspirants in Delhi’s Rajender Nagar and other coaching hubs has long been an issue, this however, caught national attention only after the recent tragedy. These students, motivated by the desire to pass one of India’s toughest exams, are frequently exploited by coaching institutes and landlords who prioritise profit over students’ well-being.
The terrible incident in which three aspirants died due to flooding at Rau’s IAS coaching basement highlights the harsh conditions that many students face. While big coaching institutes and popular teachers sell the UPSC dream and claim to offer ‘world-class’ infrastructure and safety to students in their institutes, the reality of their lies has been exposed by the Rau’s IAS incident.
To begin with, coaching institutes in these places have minimal regulatory monitoring, resulting in unsafe and illegal infrastructure practices. Many coaching centres operate out of poorly ventilated, congested, and often illegal basements, posing serious health and safety dangers to students. In June last year, Delhi Police in its status report on the Mukherjee Nagar fire incident said that out of 583 coaching institutes, just 67 have fire safety certificates, while 516 institutes do not have a fire safety certificate. These alarming numbers indicate the safety risks students are exposed to.
On top of that, these institutes charge exorbitant fees for their services, which places a substantial financial burden on students and their families. The coaching fees, coupled with high rents in areas like Rajender Nagar, create a scenario where students are forced into exploitative arrangements. Landlords exploit the high demand for accommodation by charging inflated rents for substandard living conditions. These students, full of aspirations, often live in cramped, shared spaces with inadequate facilities, further adding to their stress and discomfort.
A student’s life may be ‘cheap’ but the cost of living is not. This could be better understood from the ground report by AajTak journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, who delved into the exploitative conditions lakhs of students coming to Delhi from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, MP and other states to pursue their UPSC dream. These students live in small small rooms. These rooms are so small that a person cannot even stretch his hand fully. In a single room, there is a bed, a small cupboard to keep clothes and belongings, and a rack to keep books. Imagine its rent, two thousand? Four thousand? No! The rent of such matchbox-sized rooms is Rs 10,500. In addition, students living in PG are charged 200 to 300 rupees in the name of water bill and 12 rupees per unit is charged for electricity. There are three-seater rooms here as well, where rent is 27 thousand rupees.
A student, who is not essentially earning money or enough money to fund his studies is made to pay 10,000 to 30,000 as rent. The modest savings of these students go into satiating the greed of the coaching mafia nexus. These students are made to pay exorbitant coaching fees, and then pay such unreasonably high rents and additional costs.
These mafia-like nexus of coaching institutes, brokers, and landlords are literally sucking blood out of the bodies of these students. Other than coaching institutes and PG, local eateries also loot the students, media reports showed how just a small cup of noodles was being sold for Rs 50. These eateries were found to be operating in unhygienic and substandard conditions.
In a nutshell, these students pay Rs 2 to 5 lakhs as coaching fees, then Rs 15,000 to Rs 30,000 as rent for cramped and dingy rooms, and then there is food and other costs. In most cases, landlords do not return the security deposit. Besides the regular flats or rooms, these students are also given options like “Barsati” situated on the terrace with a plastic roof wherein landlords place wooden cardboard to create a cabin-like space to fit a bed and sometimes chair, the third option is basement rooms. From coaching institutes, brokers, and landlords to local eateries, students are being exploited at various levels.
Shedding light on the plight of civil service aspirants in Old Rajender Nagar, Deputy Superintendent Of Police, Anjali Kataria said that for a “10×10” room, a student purportedly pays Rs 12,000-15,000 per month, only to live and study in deplorable conditions. In the video shared by the UP cop, a room hardly enough to accommodate a study table, chair and cupboard is seen. There is a makeshift arrangement for drying clothes.
The dire situation of the UPSC aspirants living in Delhi reminds one of these lines from the poem ‘Bhikshuk’ by Suryakant Tripathi ‘Nirala’, “चाट रहे जूठी पत्तल वे सभी सड़क पर खड़े हुए, और झपट लेने को उनसे कुत्ते भी हैं अड़े हुए! [Beggars are licking thrown-away plates, and even dogs are adamant about snatching away those plates from them].
In movies like “12th Fail”, “restart” is given as the mantra of success, however, this “restart” in such exploitative conditions “ruins” the lives of UPSC aspirants. While Delhi is undeniably the hub of UPSC coaching institutes, the aspirants should look for options in other cities like Gurgaon, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Bengaluru etc. In addition to demanding accountability from the government authorities and coaching centres in Delhi, students should also think about breaking the monopoly of coaching mafias, this can only happen when students start exploring other options as well.
The nexus of exploitation has been going on for many years, and it is not possible to prevail without the involvement of the ‘system’ insiders or the local politicians. However, this remains a matter of police investigation. Notably, the National Commission for Women (NCW) has summoned AAP MLA from Rajender Nagar, Durgesh Pathak, in connection with the case of the death of three UPSC aspirants in Rau’s IAS.
Sadly, the coaching mafias in Delhi leverage the high aspirations of students and their families and this creates psychological pressure on students which is exacerbated by the unsafe environments provided by several coaching institutes.
Every year, 50,000 to 1,00,000 UPSC applicants travel to Delhi from all around the country to prepare for the exams. Another unfortunate aspect of this ‘civil game’ is that only about 0.01 percent of the approximately 4,00,000 candidates who take the examinations each year enter the final list. And yet, these students endure all the hardships and exploitation in the hope that maybe they could make it to that 0.01% list, however, their hopes and dreams are being mercilessly crushed by the greedy coaching mafias, and incompetent state government.
As a civil service aspirant Avinash Dubey described in his letter to the Chief Justice of India, the students in Delhi are “living a life of hell”. In the monsoon season, these students are compelled to walk through knee-deep sewage water. What preparation will these students do? What effect do these dire conditions have on the minds of these? Why are they forced to put their lives in danger? Is it not the right of students to have a decent environment to study and pursue their dreams? Do these students don’t have the right to be healthy and safe? The government, the coaching institutes, teachers and the entire nation need to think about it and together bring the desired change alongside punishing those responsible for the tragic condition of the aspirants. Enough of this “sab chalta hai” attitude as in the words of the protesting students “Maut hui hai mazaak nahin”.
