The tragic incident that occurred on July 27, 2024 which caused the death of three civil service aspirants due to flooding inside the basement of a coaching centre in Delhi’s Old Rajinder Nagar (ORN) was long coming. There is a whole system which is working day and night to bring such tragedy to fruition. A system so robust, inexplicable and incomprehensible, that it grinds dreams and aspirations to produce profits.
There is so much that aspirants have to go through during their arduous journey of preparing for civil services examinations and they might not resemble the movie “12th Fail” and the series “Aspirants”.
I would here attempt to explain the actual system that drives the “profitable businesses” in Old Rajinder Nagar (ORN), Karol bagh and Mukherjee nagar.
Of all the three places mentioned, I must admit that ORN is relatively the most “organised” place. I’ll explain how “organized” the relatively most organized place is.
Three levels of dallals
Three levels of “dallals” are working day and night, hand in glove to inflict catastrophe into the lives of aspirants. The drowning tragedy that occurred was one aspect that the entire nation witnessed on their televisions, however, there have been many instances of “suicides” as well, which in my opinion is systematic killings carried out by the greedy dallals.
For the first time when you reach ORN, you’ll encounter the lowest level of dallal, standing mostly in front of almost every coaching centre or at times some coaching centres may also recommend their favourite one to you.
These dallas may also go by fancy names such as brokers/ property dealers. They are the actual foot soldiers of the system. You cannot get any accomodation without their so-called “support”, no matter how big a hustler you are. You’ll have to pay them their 21 day cut to rent a room.
The flat owners who I term the second level dallal will not rent you even a vacant room if you have not come through a property dealer or the lowest rung dallal. These property dealers will try to negotiate higher amount which their masters (i.e. room owners) have asked them in order to increase their own cut and to keep their masters happy by showing their superior negotiating skills on the vulnerable student who were compelled to reach them for a shelter by the system.
After getting their one time cut now you are handed to the second level of dallals who will suck money out of an aspirant on a daily basis. You may feel your onetime payment would let you live peacefully for 3-4 months. However, they will keep coming to you in the name of police verification, safai, water, electricity, renovation, and so on. And mind you, none of these things are to be taken care of by them, for the actual service one has to hustle around on its own.
One of the biggest scam that looms large in the area is quarterly increase in rent. While rent should increase only by 10%, annually, the rent in these coaching hubs hikes almost every 2 months or a quarter. This torture remains, till the time one choose to live in the area.
Now l'll introduce you with the hero of all this, the actual ring master who ensures that this system keeps functioning, in the process taking the biggest pay or the largest piece of the cake .
These are the third level dallals or the top predators, these are our coaching centers and biggest of them all “the celebrity teachers”, whose names flash every nooks and corners of social media platforms.
These top predators glorify sufferings of aspirants, so that they don’t feel the pain from whatever the system is doing to them. They will relieve the aspirants of their pain without actually telling them the solution so that they carry on the exploitation and carry on profit maximisation.
They will glorify a matchbox like surviving space of 3*5 feet, so called “cardboard room”. An inhabitable 1 foot space in the library, and of course, their biggest profit making basement classes with 500 students and a single exit which is illegal but are glorified. To disassociate one from this exploitation, they at times will also say a few nasty thing about the lower level predators even if their coaching centers would have sent you to their favourite property dealer.
In my opinion, these are the biggest dallas because they are charging more than 1,500 rupees per hour per student. Now, if they even have 100 students in their class they are getting more than a lakh from this 1 hour class. They take this so called clean money to “educate” in illegal and unsafe classrooms, which actually you did not require but were trapped in because you were not capable to beat their narrative which they have set through the reels or social media team that is backing them.
After all this when one is drained off his/her precious time, money and the support that an aspirant had started with. The worst of this they will also give you “gyan” of “tajruba hoga” to make you feel you have lost nothing but gained ”tajruba” so you also learn to romanticise the sufferings.
After all this, you realized paying none of these dallas was helpful, and you start becoming from an aspirant to the IAS material.
Making of a Real IAS Material
Now a student who had come here to change the system and work for India of his/her dreams finds him/her changed. Now, he/she no longer wants to change the system, but just want to enter the system and benefit from it. Now his/her process of learning all the tricks of the system begins so that sytemultimately recognizes him/her one of its its own .
The very first thing he/she will learn is to manipulate the ethics i.e. write something and practice something else (Of course he’s learned this from his tajruba vale guru).
System wants a practical IAS who knows all the trades of the game, preferably an expert in that. Not an ideal bigot who came to Karol Bagh or ORN as a person wanting to change the system. Ultimately, all those recruiting are also part of the system. How can they allow someone who is disruptive of it?
Aaloo has become the Sona now
After recruitment, this suitable IAS material will want to recover all the money lost even before reaching LBSNAA. This is the reason why we see a single “to be IAS” on the poster of all coaching centers the very next day of results. He has successfully recovered our money. (All aspirants see him as one who recovered their money as well) usne baap ka dada ka bhai ka sabka badla le lia …. Therefore, he is our hero now.
There were 1,000 heroes declared in the list of 2023. 1,000 more will be declared in the list of 2024 and we, as an aspirant, will celebrate them. As they are our hero. Long live the factory!
That’s the reason why today when we see IAS or IPS or some other officer responsible for this tragedy is being saved with impunity. Some lower level officer will become the scapegoat and we will ready ourself for some other incident to happen.
But, I still love you my country and will never bow down to these IAS making factories. I will do my level best to bring in the required changes in the ways possible.
Mera Bharat Mahan
Jai Hind, Jai Bharat.
The featured image used here for representation purpose is generated by AI.
[The writer, Mayank Dwivedi, is a civil service aspirant. He holds a Masters degree in Sociology and a B.A degree in Chinese Language from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi.]
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