Is the Growing Level of Competition Good for the Youth

Each year hundreds of thousands of young Indians move to coaching towns such as Kota in Rajasthan to prepare for the entrance examinations to engineering and medical colleges. In 2014 about thirteen lakh students took the main test for the Indian Institutes of Technology and other engineering colleges, and the seats in the Institutes themselves numbered roughly ten thousand. Several lakh candidates compete for under a thousand posts in the civil services. The National Crime Records Bureau reports that student suicides in the country run to thousands every year. The figures frame the question of the topic, whether the growing level of competition is good for the youth.

Competition is a contest in which success for one reduces the chances of another. It is neither new nor in itself bad. It is a feature of markets, sport, politics and education. What has changed is the intensity. Population has grown, the number of good institutions and jobs has not kept pace, and the prizes of a secure career are concentrated in a few places. In a young country in which one in two people is under twenty five, the number chasing each prize is huge.

The case for competition begins with motivation. Most people work harder when they have a rival, and the desire to excel brings out talent that might remain hidden. Athletes break records in the presence of competitors. Students who aim for a rank study with more discipline. Competition rewards merit, which is fairer than rewarding birth, connections or wealth, and the open examinations to the civil services and technical institutions have allowed bright children from poor families to rise. It also teaches useful lessons, such as dealing with defeat, working under pressure and setting goals. A young person who has never competed may find the world a shock.

Economically, competition drives progress. Firms compete to offer better goods at lower prices, and countries compete in science and innovation. The global economy that India's youth will enter is intensely competitive, and those who have not learnt to meet standards will find it hard to find a place. Competition among schools, in the form of rankings, may spur improvement. For a country that wishes to prosper through human talent, a culture of ambition is a resource.

A young person who has never competed may find the world a shock.

The case against begins with the costs. Excessive competition produces anxiety and stress. Research by psychologists, beginning with the classic findings known as the Yerkes Dodson law, indicates that performance improves with arousal up to a point and falls when the pressure becomes too great. Students in highly competitive settings report sleeplessness, fear of failure and loss of self worth, and in extreme cases depression and suicide. Reports from Kota of students taking their own lives have led to calls for reform of the coaching system. A young person who is told that he is worth only his rank may stop seeing himself as anything more.

Competition can also narrow learning. When the prize depends on a score, students study what will be tested and not what interests them. Rote memorisation and coaching tricks replace understanding and curiosity. Alfie Kohn argues in No Contest that competition, contrary to popular belief, often reduces achievement because it shifts the focus from the task to the winning, and it makes learners unwilling to share ideas. Creative fields, in which risk and experiment matter, can suffer.

It can corrode ethics. When only the top places count, there is a temptation to cheat. Paper leaks, impersonation and the exposure of the Vyapam recruitment and admission scandal in Madhya Pradesh in 2013 show how far some will go to secure a place. Rivalry can spoil friendships and make young people suspicious of each other, and it rewards ruthlessness. A society that treats every encounter as a contest may lose the habits of trust and cooperation, which are also necessary for success. Most great achievements, from space programmes to scientific discoveries, are collective.

Fairness is another issue. Competition is fair only if the starting points are roughly equal. Children from affluent families can afford expensive coaching, while those from villages cannot, and the contest thus tends to favour the privileged. Reservation policies try to correct this but cannot remove the underlying gap. Intense competition for a few places can then entrench the advantages it claims to overcome.

A sensible approach starts with the observation that the harm comes from scarcity and from a single track. If there were more good colleges and more varied paths to a respectable life, in skilled trades, the arts, sports and enterprise, the pressure on each seat would ease. Carol Dweck's research on mindset suggests that young people who see ability as something that grows with effort cope better with setbacks than those who see it as fixed. Schools and parents can encourage this view, set standards that are personal and not only comparative, and give cooperation equal honour with winning. Teaching young people to compete with themselves, to be better than they were yesterday, preserves the benefit of ambition without its venom.

Parents and teachers have a particular part. A child who is praised only for results learns to fear failure, while one who is praised for effort and improvement learns to try again. Families can resist the comparison with neighbours' children, and schools can celebrate progress as well as top ranks. Counselling services, which most Indian colleges lack, would help young people to cope with pressure and to seek help early. Sport can teach healthy rivalry, since a team game combines competition with cooperation.

Media and employers share some blame. The publication of toppers' photographs and the demand for high percentages create the impression that only the first few matter. Employers who look for degrees from a handful of institutions strengthen that belief. If recruitment looked at skills and character, the frantic race for a few seats would lose some of its force.

Competition will not disappear, and wishing it away would be foolish. What can be decided is how much of a young person's worth is staked on each contest. A generation that learns to try hard, lose gracefully and help others will gain from rivalry. One that learns that a single rank decides everything may gain a few top places and lose something harder to count. The record of the students who did not make it, and what became of them, is rarely kept, and it would be the most useful data of all.