[Open Conversation] What is the final solution?

exactlyy! And the sad part is, these issues have always existed but it took 4 deaths to cause an outrage! 

• Institutes have become too big, hold significant financial, legal and human resources. They should serve as platforms on behalf of the student fraternity. They should take up the matter legally and lead the protests to bring about systemic reforms. Will Forum IAS do so? 

• Issues in the ORN are known to everybody here (rents, illegal construction, waterlogging, naked wires, women safety…) , but what are legal mandates and Safeguards, students and parents are unaware of this. As the full page ads of institutes are published, there should be a detailed explanation on legality of such issues, as awareness for the students residing there, as a caution for the parents wanting to send their children there, and as an eye opener for the authorities.  

• Clearly, the institutes have become profit making machines, churning out crores each month. A big portion of profits should be shelved out for the welfare of students, as a social responsibility. Students are migrants in search of dreams. Hostels and libraries be constructed for the poor and disprivileged. Will Forum IAS do so?

• Access to teachers be democratised. We need guidance and support at each step. But here, teachers don't really care for it. 
• Mindset shift is the biggest need of the hour. Education has come to be seen as a money game. Two considerations can be seen here, 

• Start by cleansing the mindsets, and separate the profits aside when running the education institutes. 

• Education be seen as imparting knowledge, developing intellectual capabilities in students and shaping their personalities, and not just preparing them for rat race. 

Coaching institutes should consider themselves as a major stakeholder in the education policy of the country. 

And finally, fees for the MGP be reduced. 

Big ticket reforms - Do you think those will happen in the near future? After a few days everything will return back to normal. Few arrests, few suspensions and few transfers and wohhooo problem solved. 
All these planned urbanization and all are long term solutions, which might perhaps never happen. 

Reduce the number of attempts. 
Make atleast 12 months of workex compulsory to sit for the exam. 

These two changes to start with would help the majority of students who eventually dont clear the exam to easily bounce back and also not stay for long reducing the footfall in ORN and around.

That's the sad part :(

Look at the clip of the chief secretary of Delhi on Telegram. The bureaucracy is apathetic, pathetic & corrupt. 

Please dont think of me as selfish or anything. But hear me out.

We have 700+ students in final list from various programs. We dont highlight or advertise this because we generally get good word of mouth from our selected students, and also we want to grow slow, not so fast.

And we started getting good ranks like 1,3,5,7 in second year of our program when our base was of less than 400 students. This is because with less number of students, you are able to focus better and get good results. You don't get great revenue, but you get your dopamines.

This year 20+ from all top 30 ranks students after service allocation ( IAS closed at 78 , IPS started at 79 ), have joined Forum. It is not easy to sastisfy them and the level of effort to satisfy someone who already knows things is much higher than, lets say teaching a fresher.

We get good results because we are not localised and we are getting India's best. We tried regional centers, but what was our learning was that in regional centers people who have not done college or even 12th class folks are coming from class. Now someone who is bright with let us say 8 or 9+ CGPA will manage probably both college and civils prep, but average student will not.

And that means you have to teach him more. But if you teach him more, then the bright kid will run away.

You look at interview of Hindi medium Arpit with me on Forum ( Tete a tete wala talk ). He said without taking name that Srishti ias is faltu. I asked why - he said they teach in 2 years , by when student money or energy will be gone.

But Srishti IAS problem is that lot of weak students join them, also because they dont do ( or cant do much research or worse - they dont know anyone who has cleared the exam ) , so they have to teach A,B,C,D also.

And because Arpit is bright, Srishti IAS will not suit him at all. 

So that way they are not wrong. ( Not defending, just explaining ).

Forum people will get a kick ( enjoyment ) when the results will be good, because that is the model for us. Like if we claim result ( but dont have it such as IGP etc., we end up having a terrible time ) 

Now when we did residential and I asked the bright kids - both those who cleared and those who did not - what they felt good about the place - they said sir the crowd is good here. Its like people are studying like mad.

When we started academy, we did not want to be a teaching company - like teaching 20,000 students and having 200 faculty and no results. We wanted to train the student so that he clears on his own. and that you can do by that 7Am discipline thing, making people write AWFG and value addition with CA class and all that after the basics is done.

And we cant copy that everywhere.

You goto Bangalore and ask the student what he wants to do - He'll say by next year my goal is either get promotion or clear UPSC. Now UPSC is a bit tough exam . It will require 110% from you. At least for most people. With that kind of divided attention its difficult to get result. 

In short, if you want results, don't scale much and keep it small. If you want to, however, ensure profitability, then scale - but don't expect result. At least not because of your contribution.Then like Best IAS, you buy the result or you make program free for interview students and treat ranks separately and rest of your students as bank. That is  the engineering coaching model.  Someone rightly said that you have to be clear with your goals. I think it was ganeshgiatonde or iasmocks. It is not that I will let the organisation sink. If we have trouble being profitable we will scale, but that will be as last resort only, not the first.

We learned a lot from residential because half the job was to get students and bring some competition and let them study and crack. We didnt get great results, but we got probably 40+ in total from over 100 students to clear prelims. And that probably is a good number for us.

In fact I was asking a student yesterday in library if 30+ people got through prelims or not , he was like not nodding his head. I was a bit perturbed, if people have falsely said that they cleared prelims. 

So a lil agitated I dropped him a mail 

Now, if you will notice that yellow part, how the student has said that there people are quietly preparing without blabbering etc. It means that small minority is studying. If you are blabbering about prep and studies, it means you are not. 

And the reason is that they are studying because others around them are studying. And these people have cleared prelims after like 3-4 attempts, so they dont want to lose out on anything at all.

**Also they were able to clear because they were screened for it. It's not like anyone can just pay and join courses. And they were from all states North East, West, Chennai, Vijaywada, Pondicherry, Bihar, Bengal, KTK and what not. It is impossible to do it in regional centers. Also it is difficult to create that atmosphere where relationship between coaching and student is only transactional, which happens when people aren't staying around the place.**

**

See out of the various feelings that guide action - such as greed, fear, guilt, shame - greed is the weakest emotion. I mean people wont study because they are greedy about IAS. they will study because they know someone who is studying and feel bad about it. In short, you need to create an atmosphere. I mean people in IIT do well not because IIT is teaching them something, its because there are other good people around.

And you see this, just as I was writing this post I got this.

You need to have good students with a fair competition. This system may not be good for everyone, and frankly at one point the student above was all anxious and in give up mode. It happens when you have written 4 prelims, and you fail in all 4. But somehow this year he managed to clear Prelims, and look the focus he is having now. Extremely precise and methodical.

I think that this year in SFG we wont allow people who have written 2 SFGs and not cleared prelims, because clearly it has not worked for them, and they will waste their money and our feedback will also get bad. Also for SFG we end up expanding classrooms and increase expenses, and then get into trouble financially.

Also some sort of screening mechanism should be there for other courses too so that a homoegenous crowd is there, then we can extract results from them. But if we get very heterogenous people, some having 50% in 10th with someone having 95%, someone who can write poetry sitting with someone who cannot write 1 page about himself, then the whole batch performance becomes poor. 

A lot of people do not realise that no one living within city can say anything against municipalities. I mean you could be Amitabh Bachchan or an SRK. But if you complain about BMC, next day they will break your boundary because certain law from 1891 says that house boundary should not exceed 4 feet. You could say things against the State Govt, sometimes even the Union, but not against .

Current building laws allow coaching  only on GF and FF. But right now they are allowing on higher floors. But that can change anytime. Also the law is not clearly written anywhere, but this year May ( I met@Tata  and did not know that the popular member was from classes , so when he messaged I called him to MCD office to witness first hand the power of bureaucracy - and after the meeting he decided it was better to be a bureaucrat ). So when I argued before the court that nothing in Master Plan stops us ( I had spent 3 days underlining and going through it ) , the DC cited some other clause where something else was written.. So in Master plan also different things are written in different places.. so state is free to use clause which is convenient to them. 

And for GF and First Floor, you will have to outbid Tanishq, Haldiram, Maruti, Hyundai Kalyan Jewellers etc. In our building Best IAS was able to outbid Haldiram ( a 6000 crore turnover company ) , so Haldiram shifted. 

It isnt for nothing they say that fact is stranger than fiction. 

Yes there are two exits. You can view the building from backside. Or go where the gensets are kept. You will see emmergency exit staircases. In fact theives used it to climb to our floor and cut copper piping of the AC. So for a week or so AC in common and staff area was not working and we didnt know why it was not working.

The way things are, and with people losing their lives, it's not worth it coming to Delhi for preparation.

But what else is the solution.

@Neyawn I think the issue is far bigger than basement classes, or libraries. As Professor Manoj Jha said in the Parliament we have become a country of accidents. In my opinion, the final solution should be:

• Disaster preparedness and infrastructure resilience should take center stage of debates, policy formulations, and judicial pronouncements.
• We should bring a holistic bill for building safety norms, for residential and commercial. It should be nationwide and execution should be region-specific, keeping in mind the geographical, climatic, demographic, and other conditions.
• The focus should be more on execution. We can put in a criminal negligence clause on the part of the officer in charge, and also a stipulated time frame to implement the provisions of the bill. If any mishaps occur, there can be a criminal offense provision for the owner of the building as well.

- Overall, I believe we have a tendency to discuss and forget things if any nationwide significant action is not taken . We are protesting for the past 4 days incessantly but I am worried about the memory of this protest in the minds of authorities, policy makers and most importantly citizens.