Asia | Cramming culture

Private tutoring is booming across poorer parts of Asia

Governments are struggling to keep up with an educational arms race

Children study at a private home tuition centre in Kashmir
Expensive, but worth it?Photograph: Getty Images
|Delhi and Singapore

The moral of the story is clear in “12th Fail”, a recent Bollywood hit about a poor farm boy, Manoj, bent on passing India’s ruthless police exam. Persevere and be richly rewarded, it suggests. Yet for a film about education and meritocracy, the portrayal of Indian schools is dismal: teacher-abetted cheating is rife at Manoj’s local school. Where he ultimately finds success, and love, is not at school, but at a jam-packed tutoring centre in Delhi.

Explore more

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Cramming culture”

From the September 21st 2024 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

Discover more

The Adani scandal takes the shine off Modi’s electoral success

The tycoon’s indictment clouds the prime minister’s prospects

Priyanka Gandhi addresses a rally standing in front of an image of herself.

Priyanka Gandhi: dynastic scion, and hope of India’s opposition

Poised to enter parliament, she may have bigger ambitions than that 


Kazakhstan, the Ustyurt plateau. Caspian sea;

The Caspian Sea is shrinking rapidly

This has big implications for Russia, which has come to rely on Central Asian ports


Racial tensions boil over in New Zealand

A controversial bill regarding Maori people punctures its relative harmony

Once a free-market pioneer, Sri Lanka takes a leap to the left

A new president with Marxist roots now dominates parliament too



Discover more

Kim Jong Un meets soldiers who took part in a training event in North Korea, on March 13th 2024

North Korea’s fanatical regime just got scarier

A new missile test, troops to Russia and death sentences for K-pop

Portrait of author Han Kang.

Han Kang wins the Nobel prize in literature for 2024

The South Korean author offers another example of the country’s cultural clout


A woman reads a book at a bookshop in Seoul, South Korea, September 22nd 2020

Turn down the K-pop and pay attention to K-healing

The rise of South Korean books about burnout has taken the world by storm


Kim Beom-su, the billionaire founder of Kakao, faces trial

But will the tech entrepreneur be seen as “too big to jail”?

Could Japan and South Korea finally become friends?

Younger generations are less concerned with their countries shared history

What a Japanese gold mine says about its approach to history

The site, recently declared a World Heritage site, is more contentious than it seems