Kota District Magistrate Dr Ravinder Goswami has launched a weekly ‘Dinner with Collector’ programme under the ‘Kamyab Kota’ campaign to ease the stress of the coaching students in this coaching city. Himself an MBBS and a former coaching student from the town, Goswami launched the programme last month in view of the rising number of suicides by coaching students, mainly due to study-related stress.
Under the ‘Dinner with Collector’, he has dinner with the students in a hostel every Friday to listen to their mind and heart. On February 1, he interacted with the students of a hostel in the Indraprastha area. He sang Bollywood songs with the students, shared success mantras and motivated them. Notably, two coaching students and a 27-year-old BTech student committed suicide by hanging last month. Twenty-six coaching students allegedly committed suicide in Kota in 2023, the highest figure so far in the city, where over two lakh students come from all parts of the country every year for preparation of entrance exams for admission in medical and engineering colleges.
There are about 4500 hostels and 40,000 PG accommodations for these coaching students in the city. During the latest interaction, Goswami, an IAS officer of 2016 batch, told the students, “Why to create self-doubt?” Sharing their concerns about studies and preparation for competitive exams at the dinner, he told them to identify their strong as well as weak points, and to improve the weak ones. It was the second programme of its kind, the first being on January 26, which was the 75th Republic Day. On a question by a student, Kripa, about anxiety before exams, Goswami said, “Self-doubt and anxiety within limits are good as they activate your sympathetic nervous system, leading you to indulge in fight and flight mode. But do not take anxiety to the extreme level. From flight mode, you you reach the fight mode.”
“Keep anxiety to a certain limit and take deep breath when you feel your hands are trembling,” the collector advised by referring to to a conversation between Lord Krishna and Arjun in Bhagwad Geeta. Recounting his own experience as a student in Kota years back, the collector said he never got name and number in test series during two years of his preparation in Kota for entrance exam for admission in medical college. But he never got worried, he said, and added that he avoided creating self-doubt.
“God opens several doors, so why to create self-doubt?” he told the students. At the dinner, while holding a mike, Goswami sang the old Hindi song ‘Aa chal ke tujhe, main le ke chalun ek aise gagan ke taley’. The coaching students also sang with him. In the first event of ‘Dinner with Collector’, Goswami had dinner with coaching students in a hostel in Landmark City area and gave tips of success. The collector sang the same song with the coaching students and cut a cake on the occasion of Republic Day.
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