SECTION A
Essay
125 marks
Is the growing level of competition good for the youth?
WRITE IN
90 min
1,000–1,200 words
Reading the topic
The question asks whether intensifying competition in exams, college admissions and jobs helps young Indians grow. The examiner expects a balanced view: competition builds discipline and merit, but when millions chase a few seats it turns into a costly, stressful lottery that narrows learning and harms mental health.
ThesisCompetition helps youth when it rewards effort across many open paths, but harms them when scarcity turns it into a single high-stakes race.
Dimensions to cover
- 1Personal growth: striving against peers builds discipline, focus and resilience that serve young people for life
- 2Mental health: exam pressure and fear of failure contribute to anxiety and student suicides, especially in coaching hubs
- 3Equity: expensive coaching tilts entrance exams towards families who can pay, undermining the merit competition claims to reward
- 4Scarcity: the real driver is too few good colleges and jobs, so competition is a symptom of limited opportunity
- 5Learning: drilling for objective tests crowds out curiosity, reading and creativity in the crucial teenage years
- 6Society: a culture that ranks children constantly devalues cooperation, sport and vocational paths
Counter-view
- Some say competition is natural and toughens youth for a global economy. The essay should accept healthy rivalry but show that winner-take-all exams produce burnout rather than excellence
Open and close
- Open: Open with a sixteen-year-old in a Kota hostel at two in the morning, solving her fortieth practice problem as her parents' loan instalment falls due back home
- Close: Conclude that competition serves youth when society widens the field of opportunity so that losing one race is not losing one's future
Where marks usually go
- Writing only about coaching suicides and ignoring the genuine benefits of competition
- Blaming students or parents while ignoring the shortage of quality seats and jobs
- Limiting competition to exams and forgetting jobs, sport and social media comparison
Examples that fit
- CaseKota in Rajasthan, home to a large coaching industry for engineering and medical entrance exams, has drawn national concern over student suicides.NCRB, Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India reports
- CurrentIn January 2024 the Union Ministry of Education issued guidelines for coaching centres, including a bar on enrolling students below 16.Ministry of Education, Guidelines for Registration and Regulation of Coaching Centres, 2024
- ThinkerAlfie Kohn argued that competition undermines intrinsic motivation and that cooperative settings produce better learning.Alfie Kohn, No Contest: The Case Against Competition (1986)
- ThinkerThe Yerkes-Dodson law found that performance improves with arousal only up to a point and then falls, a model for when competitive pressure helps or hurts.Yerkes and Dodson, Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 1908