Rein in coaching centres

The editorial ‘Tutorial excesses’ (February 20) was spot on about parents being mainly responsible for pushing their wards into engineering and medical streams and the resultant increased stress levels being faced by the hapless teenagers. And the kind of rote learning methods employed by coaching institutes with the sole aim of getting ranks in entrance tests are worsening the situation leading to students to resort to extreme measures like suicides.

The latest guidelines issued by the Centre, especially the one barring enrolment of students below 16 years, would ameliorate the overall situation to some extent. Guideline regarding restricting the coaching classes to five hours a day is crucial and needs to be implemented strictly, as the stress levels rise with increase in the number of coaching hours. More importantly, there is an urgent need for a realisation on the part of the parents that there are plenty of opportunities in streams other than engineering and medicine.

Kosaraju Chandramouli

Hyderabad

Change mindset

The alarming frequency of suicides amongst young students has brought the coaching industry into spotlight. When this industry is worth ₹12,000 crore, one should not expect those running it to be concerned about students’ mental health. Ultimately, the onus lies on parents to change their mindset. Life does not end with IITs, NEET or UPSC. There is so much else to do. Such has been the mushrooming of coaching centres that it would be difficult to open a counselling centre in each of these places.

Bal Govind

Noida

Farmers’ agitation

The very fact that four rounds of talks by the government with the Samyukt Kisan Morcha group and others have failed only shows that there is absolutely no unanimity on the issues amongst the farmer unions itself. The proposal to give a definite MSP for five years for five crops should have been welcomed by the farmers.

Their demand that it should be a perpetual MSP for all crops is absurd. Of course, there should be uniform MSP to compensate farmers during crop losses due to harsh weather conditions.

Katuru Durga Prasad Rao

Hyderabad

Controlling air pollution

This refers to ‘Air pollution needs decentralised, micro solutions’ (February 20). The WHO recently revised its decade-old air quality guideline that now clearly indicates air pollution impacts human health at lower levels than previously understood.

Home to 22 of the world’s 30 most polluted cities, the bulk of India’s population breathes air that is at least 10 times more polluted than WHO’s previous PM 2.5 standards. India needs multi-level actions that range from defining goals and identifying obstacles to implementing measures and performing policy reviews across different administrative levels.

An effective air quality monitoring system is a critical first step towards implementation of better air quality management, that will in turn allow citizens to breath clean air.

S Muthulakshmi

Virudhunagar, TN

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