Srinagar, June 18 -- Not long ago, in Anantnag, a young girl preparing for NEET died by suicide. She was just 18. She had left the familiarity of home for the promise of Kota, India's coaching capital, where thousands of students chase dreams shaped by the alphabet soup of JEE, NEET, and UPSC.

Her life ended in silence, just another number in a long, grim list of suicides that has turned Kota into something darker: a city of sorrow.

This wasn't the first tragedy, and, heartbreakingly, it won't be the last.

So far this year, at least 15 students have taken their lives in Kota. The Supreme Court recently asked the Rajasthan government what, if anything, had been done. But the real question runs deeper: how did we let things get this far?...