THE NEET controversy has again brought into focus the pressure under which youngsters prepare for competitive exams. It reminds me of an encounter with a boy last year. I was on my way to the market when he approached me from across the road and urgently asked the time. What surprised me was the fact that he wasn’t carrying a mobile phone, which also serves as a watch. Instead of answering immediately, I asked him about his studies. “I’m preparing for CLAT (Common Law Admission Test),” he replied, adding that he had failed to pass NEET. His father, a doctor who ran a hospital, now wanted him to pursue law instead. I suggested he enrol in some course, maybe through distance education, to avoid a gap year and have something to fall back on. He listened politely, though his attention seemed elsewhere. He seemed to be searching for something — or someone. I finally told him the time and he hurried away. I wondered why a doctor who ran his own hospital had not even given his son a mobile phone. I also thought about the burden the boy carried — failing NEET in a country where professional ambitions are often inherited before they are chosen. For many young people today, life after school has become an exhausting corridor of entrance tests, cut-offs, coaching centres and parental expectations. A child barely recovers from one examination before being redirected towards another. Even strangers like me offer unsolicited suggestions. Medicine, engineering, law, management or fallback options — the pressure rarely changes. Success has become intensely competitive, while failure has become deeply personal. By the time I reached the coffee shop, I was still thinking about the pressures faced by young people like him. Then I saw him again, sitting with a girl his age. She seemed unaware that he and I had spoken minutes earlier. He noticed me, then quickly looked away. I understood his discomfort and moved on without acknowledging him. At that age, sitting with a friend in a cafe is rarely just about coffee. It is time borrowed from schedules, expectations and supervision. It is companionship in a phase of life dominated by rankings, coaching and uncertain futures. For many young people, such meetings become the only spaces where they are not seen as candidates or obedient children. The missing phone was probably less about affordability and more about discipline and supervision. The boy’s urgency had little to do with CLAT coaching. He was simply trying to protect a small corner of his personal life within a tightly supervised existence. Somewhere between entrance tests, parental anxieties and hidden meetings in cafes, a generation is quietly learning not merely how to compete, but how to survive under the weight of constant pressure. The writer is a professor at Punjabi University, Patiala
