Refugee colonies to UPSC hubs: How Karol Bagh, Rajinder Nagar evolved
The Indian Express | 5 days ago | 05-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
5 days ago | 05-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
As the train pulls into the Karol Bagh Metro station, a young man inside one of the coaches jokes to his friend, “Come on, brother. Let’s become IAS officers.”The quip aptly sums up what the locality has come to represent over the last few decades. Starting from the name of the Metro station — Drishti IAS-Karol Bagh station, named after a popular coaching institute sponsoring it — to numerous hoardings promising “best UPSC preparation” and hordes of aspirants milling about, the area has become synonymous with the country’s fixation with the ultimate government job: The Indian Administrative Service. One Metro station away is Rajinder Nagar, another hub of UPSC coaching institutes.But not long ago, the twin areas in Central Delhi were largely semi-commercial, residential places known to be home to several Partition refugees.Professor Amar Farooqui, who used to teach History at Delhi University, says that around the 19th Century, Delhi’s suburbs began coming up in its west, in places like Paharganj. “Towards the end of the century, Karol Bagh came up. It’s a relatively older settlement unlike Rajinder Nagar, which is a proper Partition settlement colony,” he says.Karol Bagh had a fairly large Muslim population in the pre-Partition period, he says, and it was a relatively affluent suburb. A few educational institutes like Tibbia college (a 19th-Century Ayurvedic and Unani college) and later, the Khalsa College was established here over time.Among refugees, the slightly better-off settlers such as the Sindhis made this area their home. There was also a significant South Indian population too, particularly of Tamilians, Farooqui notes, with the establishment of Delhi as the British capital in 1911.Rajinder Nagar was one of the more planned colonies, he says, with the more affluent refugees getting 54 sq-yard plots from the government in the 1950s.Dr Rana Behal, former professor of History at DU’s Deshbandhu College, lived in the nearby area and came from Amritsar in 1965. He says, “Many new colonies in Delhi emerged initially as part of the settlement of displaced people who came from West Punjab. Slowly, they began to urbanise. Karol Bagh was a hub of new kinds of markets in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Rajinder Nagar was essentially a residential colony, where the newly arrived middle-class began to emerge as a more literate class than earlier, attending schools and colleges.”Coaching institutes here came along much later. Dr Behal believes the liberation of the Indian economy in 1991 also had a role to play, with growing personal incomes allowing more people to afford fees for institutes.One of the earliest entrants in the UPSC sector here was Vajiram and Ravi, whose lone centre in Delhi is in Old Rajinder Nagar.Elangovan Rajalingam, head of administration at Vajiram and Ravi, who has been associated with the institute for over 30 years, says that initially, the institute was situated close to the nearby Ajmal Khan Road but shifted to its current location in 1997 as that area became congested. “We were the first people in Rajinder Nagar (to come up with such an institute)… we thought we could go for this good, residential area compared to a commercial area,” he says.Before this, Ber Sarai in South Delhi, near JNU, and DU’s North Campus area were the centres for UPSC preparation, says Rajalingam.On how UPSC preparation has permeated all aspects of life in Rajinder Nagar and Karol Bagh, he remarks, “If you meet one bookshop owner, he knows more than the aspirant!”Meanwhile, the coaching hub boom has had a ripple effect on the areas’ economy. Rajalingam says the rent for a PG room, which used to be Rs 5,000 just a decade ago, is now close to Rs 20,000. Fees of coaching institutes have also spiralled, with some even charging Rs 1.5 lakh a year.One of the businesses that seems to have benefitted the most is that of photo-copying. Bhagwaan Singh, owner of Indian Copier Systems at Karol Bagh, who set up his shop in 2013, says his rent has shot up from Rs 20,000 per month to Rs 1 lakh over the years.“The transformation only happened when coaching institutes came up. Before that, there was nothing like this… not even markets, it was mostly a residential colony… Now nearly all of it is developed, both old and new Rajinder Nagar,” he adds.The development also attracted businessmen from other places. One such trader is Vishwadeep Parashar, owner of Tirupathi Book Centre, who has been in Karol Bagh since 2011.It was not business which brought Parashar to the city, though. Hailing from Uttar Pradesh, he came to Delhi for college and then stayed back to give the exam. He set up a photocopying business and later started dealing in books. “Around that time, shops for exam-related books were rare, but there was a supply of study material from Ber Sarai to Central Delhi. This made me realise a new market was coming up,” he says. The advent of Delhi Metro to the area in the mid-2000s also contributed to its growing popularity.For students such as Harshitha, an engineering graduate from Karnataka, the expense is worth it. Staying here since her course began in June 2022, she says, “This area is full of students and the environment is all about UPSC preparation. It’s quite convenient for us… We come, complete the coaching and then decide if we want to continue staying here.”Moreover, Delhi’s popularity in terms of UPSC coaching has further increased with the number of recent exam toppers being from the city. Referring to Tina Dabi, who topped the 2015 exam, Sakshi Bharadwaj, manager at Vision IAS in Karol Bagh, says, “I think this area majorly developed after people like Dabi, who belongs to Delhi, did well.”She adds that her institute sees a greater inflow of people from states such as Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and the South.After Covid-19 struck, many institutes have shifted to online or hybrid methods of coaching.The economy adapted too. Singh’s photocopy business, for example, started online delivery via e-commerce services. But that model does not always work. “Online is not better at all, we have to pay more for pick-ups and sometimes customers read books and return them within seven days,” he says.Rajalingam believes that overall, benefits are reaching students from across communities thanks to online coaching. “It’s a good thing for those with jobs, students in colleges for whom attendance is a must, and for women as their parents might not be ready to send them to other states.” But still, he adds, 80% of people opt for offline classes.And what happens to those who don’t clear the exam? Parashar says over time, students get to know about other government exams, like one for the Combined Defence Services Examination conducted by UPSC for military positions. The subjects are fundamentally the same and only the level of difficulty changes, he says.“No one is a failure. It’s a big exam, and one among a million students make the cut,” he adds.
