We should use the pandemic as an excuse and destroy coaching factories like Kota etc. Why just Kota? There are too many such factories in Andhra Pradesh boasting as residential junior colleges. They screw up mental health of lakhs of students every year.

So I grew up in a village, went to a govt school. To fail in 10th was a norm, to pass exams was great and pass with 1st class was "whoaaa-he should have never been in this village and they will spoil him if he stays here".

In my case luckily I have an elder brother and sister and I was kind of expected to take the path they did. But imagine being first child and the pressure. Some of my friends like me were picked up and thrown in these so called residential colleges in Ongole. Ugh. Worst days.

We were not at all cut out of this kind of education. We used to roam around in villages like free birds and got lucky wth studies. Now imagine the suffocation. You have to get up at 5am to study and continue till 11.00pm. but what is there to study for so long? Don't ask. Revise

My brother taught me some tricks. How you can sleep under the bed and ask your friends to lock the room from outside. The warden will switch off the mains, so no fan but still this is a better torture relatively.

My friends were not so lucky. You have to get up at 5am and stay with books till 11.00 pm. You can't go outside hostels. Only one day per week some parent can visit. No mobile phones. This was in 1998-00.

I told my parents the situation. All the people here are studying for 12 hours and i have no idea what to study also for so much time. So I will obviously fail. Parents realised that they made a mistake and asked me to somehow pass the exams and not target ranks.

My friends were not this lucky. Targets set. EAMCET rank must be below this. We haven't even heard the word EAMCET before this.

One of the friends got mentally very badly impacted. He couldn't score the target EAMCET rank. Torture started at home that we paid so much fee but all wasted now. He had to treated for neurological issues and had died by suicide.

There is another friend who after 20 years hasn't still recovered from this even after many years of treatment. He was one of the smartest people till 10th. And this is not just our village, this is very common in AP. This is not education, it is exploitation.

One of the reasons I survived was the privilege of village life. I knew how to jump the walls and escape. There was a risk of breaking your leg or barbed wire tearing up ur skin but that's all worth it. I used to spend hours at night at railway station because that's more freedom

In the end I was the college topper and that's the worst part. I knew it was pure luck and nothing else. But that gave hope to many other parents in the village to send their kids to these factories. Many more kids experienced the torture and I became the enemy of "merit".