Fifteen bodies pulled from a charred building in Lucknow. Fifteen futures erased in the smoke of a coaching centre. Another fire in India's exam factory.
The blaze broke out Monday evening at a centre in the Hazratganj area, a dense commercial district. Students, mostly teenagers, were trapped on upper floors. Windows were barred. Exit doors were locked. The building lacked a fire NOC, police said. By the time firefighters arrived, the screams had stopped.
This wasn't an accident. It was a system failure written in concrete and greed.
The city of cram schools
Lucknow has become a hub for coaching centres — private institutes that drill students for competitive exams. Engineering, medicine, civil services. Parents shell out lakhs in fees. Children spend 14-hour days in windowless rooms. The promise: crack the test, escape poverty.
The fire started on the ground floor, where an electrical short ignited stacks of paper — test sheets, study material, photocopies. The building had one narrow staircase. No sprinklers. No alarm. The fire spread upward in minutes.
Survivors describe chaos. Some jumped from windows. Others were found huddled in corners, suffocated by toxic smoke. The owner of the centre is missing. Police have registered a case of culpable homicide.
“We heard shouting from outside. Then we saw smoke. By the time we broke the door, it was too late.” — Neighbour who tried to help
Deadly déjà vu
This isn't the first time. In 2019, 22 students died in a coaching centre fire in Surat. In 2021, a blaze at a hostel for exam aspirants in Delhi killed 17. Each time, the same story: overcrowded buildings, flouted safety norms, and a system that treats education like a factory line.
The coaching industry in India is worth over ₹50,000 crore. It operates largely unregulated. Centres mushroom in residential buildings, converting bedrooms into classrooms. Fire departments are understaffed. Inspections are bribed away. Parents, desperate for their children to succeed, ignore the risks.
The tragedy is that these fires are preventable. Fire safety laws exist. But enforcement is a joke. The Lucknow centre had been inspected three months ago. It was given a clean chit. How? That's the question nobody wants to answer.
The pressure cooker
But there's a deeper rot. India's education system has become a pressure cooker. One exam — the JEE, the NEET — determines a child's entire future. Coaching centres exploit this fear. They market themselves as the only route to success. Students are pushed to the brink. Suicides among exam aspirants are common. Now, fires are killing them too.
The government will promise action. A committee will be formed. A compensation cheque will be handed over. The owner will be arrested. And next year, another fire will break out in another city. The cycle doesn't break because the system doesn't want it to break.
Meanwhile, parents will keep paying. Children will keep cramming. And the country will keep lighting candles, posting outrage on social media, and forgetting until the next tragedy.
“My son called me at 5 pm. He said the room was filling with smoke. I told him to run. He said the door was locked.” — Mother of a victim
The verdict
Fifteen more lives. Fifteen more hashtags. Fifteen more promises. Until we decide that a child's life is worth more than a coaching centre's profit, the smoke will keep rising. And the fire department will keep arriving too late.
The question isn't when the next fire will happen. It's whether we'll do anything different when it does.
