# Mother Runs 3 km Barefoot for Daughters' Fees as Families Stake Everything on Government Job Dreams

> In Beed, Maharashtra, 47-year-old Ramabai Ranveer raced 3 km barefoot to secure ₹3,000 for her daughters' higher education and exam coaching, spotlighting the grueling financial and mental toll of India's government job craze.

**Type:** article · **Category:** Investigations · **Published:** 2026-09-22 · **Source:** TrendKia
**Canonical:** https://trendkia.com/en/investigations/betiyon-ki-parhai-ke-lie-nnge-paira-dauri-man-sarakari-naukari-ki-taiyari-men-kyon-luta-jati-hai-parivaron-ki-punji-36247 · **Language:** English
**Tags:** Ramabai Ranveer, Beed Marathon, Government Jobs, MPSC, Competitive Exams, Coaching Industry, Student Suicides

On the wet tarmac of Ambajogai in Maharashtra's Beed district, 47-year-old Ramabai Ranveer ran three kilometres holding her slipping footwear in her hands. She was not pursuing an athletic medal or sporting glory. Her entire focus was locked onto the first-place prize money of ₹3,000, an amount essential to keep her two daughters enrolled in college and competitive exam coaching. Working as a domestic cook and household help, Ramabai had never undergone any formal athletic training. Following the death of her husband, she relocated to Ambajogai and shouldered the entire financial responsibility of the household. Her elder daughter Pooja is training hard for police recruitment drives, while her younger daughter Aarti is pursuing a BSc in Information Technology while simultaneously preparing for the Maharashtra Public Service Commission examination.

The local race was held on 29 August in Ambajogai. As continuous rains made the road slick, Ramabai realized her footwear was losing traction, took off her slippers, held them tightly in her hands, and sprinted the remaining distance barefoot. Her grit earned her the top prize of ₹3,000. While her personal determination won admiration, the incident brings to light a widespread and distressing reality across India: why preparing for a single public sector job frequently morphs into years of repeated examinations, mushrooming coaching fees, and crushing family debt.

## The Multi-Year Loop of Just One More Attempt
When an aspirant embarks on competitive exam preparation, the roadmap appears simple and direct. The candidate aims to study rigorously for twelve months, clear the selection rounds, and secure a lifetime of government employment. In practice, that linear timeline quickly unravels. A student often misses the preliminary cut-off by merely one or two marks. Family members and mentors naturally step in with encouragement, urging that since a solid base has already been built, another attempt should not be skipped. The second year pushes the aspirant into the next stage of the screening, consuming another complete twelve months of preparation.

Before long, the candidate broadens their scope beyond that original test. Applications are dispatched for the Staff Selection Commission, Indian Railways, state police forces, public service commissions, and any general clerical vacancy that advertises openings. What began as a one-year plan for a single exam soon spirals into a multi-year cycle across numerous recruitment boards. The typical path follows a familiar four-step progression

- **Attempt 1:** The candidate falls short of the cut-off margin and resolves to reset the entire syllabus.
- **Attempt 2:** One stage is successfully cleared, requiring another year of intense focus for the following tier.
- **Attempt 3:** The final selection is missed by a microscopic fraction, prompting the household to fund one final try.
- **Attempt 4:** Fresh notifications from adjacent government departments appear, triggering an entirely new set of application forms.

A clear instance of this perseverance is Manoj Pal from Narmadapuram in Madhya Pradesh. After enduring repeated cycles of preparation and setbacks, Pal finally cleared the MPPSC State Services Examination 2024.

## The Real Cost Beyond Classroom Tuition Fees
Popular perception often reduces exam preparation costs to the tuition charged by coaching institutes. That fee, however, represents only a portion of the actual capital an ordinary family must commit. When an aspirant moves away from their hometown to set up base in an educational coaching hub, every additional year piles on the recurring expenses of room rent, daily tiffin services, updated books, test series subscriptions, travel to distant exam venues, and official application fees.

Even for candidates who opt to study from their own homes to save money, financial outlays do not disappear. They still require active digital class subscriptions, fresh reference publications, internet access, and continuous exam application fees. For families surviving on day wages or modest salaries, funding these recurring costs year after year creates profound financial instability.

## The Hidden Challenges of Self-Study at Home
On paper, studying from home sounds cost-effective and practical, needing only a mobile device, reference texts, and a quiet corner. Yet competitive recruitment requires aspirants to design their own schedules, manage vast syllabi, and evaluate their own shortcomings daily. Sustaining that solitary self-discipline over months and years without structured oversight proves exceptionally taxing for many individuals.

Furthermore, local study environments differ sharply across geographies. An aspirant attempting self-study from home in Bhopal, Jaisalmer, or an interior village in Uttar Pradesh often lacks peers working toward the exact same syllabus. Within established coaching districts, by contrast, hundreds of students study side by side, establish informal study groups, and exchange real-time updates regarding exam patterns and official notifications. Researchers investigating India's private coaching industry emphasize that this collective atmosphere and peer interaction constitute a major social pillar of the entire preparation journey.

## Why Students Pay for Coaching Despite Free Online Material
The internet currently provides an endless library of free resources, ranging from recorded video lectures and downloadable textbooks to past exam papers and community mock exams. Despite this abundance, commercial coaching centres continue to see strong demand. The fundamental service coaching centres offer extends far beyond raw educational content.

Institutes provide a ready-made ecosystem of fellow candidates competing for identical posts, alongside rigid daily structures. Coaching timetables dictate precisely what pages must be studied each morning, set concrete submission deadlines, and display comparative rankings against hundreds of peers. For a candidate chasing SSC selection in Prayagraj, MPPSC rank in Bhopal, or a police badge in Rajasthan, paying for that disciplined framework feels like an essential investment. The deeper crisis emerges when repeated years of structured coaching still fail to yield an appointment letter.

## The Sunk Cost Trap and the Relentless Push for Another Try
By the time a candidate enters their third or fourth attempt, the household has poured substantial savings, emotional hope, and prime years of the youth's life into the process. Walking away at that juncture can feel far more agonizing than paying for one more roll of the dice, because the next exam cycle still holds out the promise of turning all prior sacrifices into guaranteed employment and social standing.

The sheer scarcity of vacancies magnifies the perceived prestige of a government post. According to central government figures disclosed in Parliament in 2020, approximately 2.5 crore applicants sit for examinations to compete for roughly 1.25 lakh central government posts each year. While these millions do not contend for a single opening, the ratio reflects the staggering gap between the number of citizens seeking secure public sector jobs and the actual positions available. Parents consequently fall back on the logic that having already sacrificed several years, one more attempt cannot hurt.

Addressing the systemic challenges of these mass competitive exams, IPS Pankaj Choudhary has underscored that publishing recruitment results without delay and ensuring absolute procedural transparency remain paramount for young aspirants. However, the window for preparation is finite; age ceilings, permissible attempts, and household savings inevitably run dry.

## The Human Toll When the Public Sector Dream Collapses
When the pursuit of a government job finally concludes without success, some candidates manage to pivot into private enterprise or independent trades. For many others, the prolonged strain, repeated failures, and societal judgment inflict devastating damage on mental well-being. An analysis of National Crime Records Bureau data carried out by the IC3 Institute revealed that between 2013 and 2022, India recorded over 1 lakh student suicides.

Data from the NCRB for the year 2022, presented before the Supreme Court, documented 13,044 student suicides within that twelve-month span alone. Among those tragedies, 2,248 deaths were linked directly to failure in examinations. This figure corresponds to an alarming daily average of nearly 36 student suicides, though NCRB records do not disaggregate government job aspirants from the general student population.

The acute psychological pressure is vividly evident in coaching hubs like Kota, where tens of thousands of young people prepare for competitive admissions and recruitments. Official records in the Rajasthan Assembly documented 53 suicides among school, college, and coaching students in the Kota division between 2019 and 2022. The state government highlighted poor mock test scores, intense parental expectations, academic anxiety, and acute family financial hardships as primary contributing factors in those deaths. While these broader statistics cover all categories of academic failure, they illuminate the profound human toll exacted by high-stakes exam culture across the country.

## What this means for you
This situation highlights the crushing financial and psychological burdens borne by millions of families chasing public sector employment across India.

- **Across India:** Countless lower-middle-class households exhaust their life savings on coaching fees, hostel rents, and examination applications with negligible statistical odds of success. Candidates and parents must establish clear timeframes and alternative career plans rather than gambling indefinite years on recruitment cycles.
- **In Maharashtra and rural belts:** Economically disadvantaged families often struggle to cover even baseline application fees and educational costs for their daughters. Delays in state recruitment processes directly jeopardize the livelihoods of vulnerable households that borrow money to fund preparation.
- **For student mental well-being:** The acute stigma of academic failure continues to trigger severe mental health crises and alarming suicide rates across educational hubs. Households need to actively decouple personal self-worth and family prestige from government job selection to protect youth well-being.
- **On household financial planning:** Aspirants must cap preparation budgets and set strict deadlines of two to three attempts before pivoting to skill-based private employment. Uncontrolled multi-year attempts deplete retirement funds and pull working-class families deeper into cyclical debt.

## Why this happened
The enduring obsession with government employment stems from an intense search for lifetime security amid an overwhelming scarcity of formal jobs.

- **Extreme vacancy-to-applicant ratios:** Over 2.5 crore applicants compete for approximately 1.25 lakh central government posts each year, creating an enormous supply-demand imbalance. These steep odds push young aspirants into repeated examination cycles spanning three to five years.
- **Social prestige and job permanency:** Public sector roles in India represent guaranteed stability, steady perks, and immense social capital that informal private employment rarely offers. Consequently, working-class parents willingly liquidate modest assets to bankroll endless coaching attempts.
- **Protracted recruitment timelines:** Administrative delays, litigation, and staggered exam calendars mean a single selection cycle often drags on for two to three years. Candidates find it difficult to exit midway after investing significant effort, remaining trapped until age bars or funds run out.

## Questions & Answers

### 1. Who is Ramabai Ranveer and what feat did she achieve in Beed?
Ramabai Ranveer is a 47-year-old domestic cook from Ambajogai in Beed, Maharashtra, who ran 3 km barefoot on 29 August to win a ₹3,000 prize to fund her daughters' higher education and exam coaching.

### 2. Which competitive examinations are Ramabai's daughters preparing for?
Her daughter Pooja is preparing for police recruitment drives, while her other daughter Aarti is studying BSc IT and preparing for the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) exams.

### 3. How do aspirants get trapped in repeated examination attempts?
Candidates usually plan for a single year, but after narrowly missing cut-offs, they invest successive years into multiple exams like SSC, railways, and state PSCs, turning one attempt into an open-ended struggle.

### 4. What is the ratio of applicants to vacancies in central government recruitments?
According to official government figures disclosed in 2020, approximately 2.5 crore candidates appear for roughly 1.25 lakh central government posts each year.

### 5. What major costs do aspirants incur beyond tuition fees?
Beyond coaching fees, students spend heavily on room rents, mess food, reference books, test series subscriptions, travel to distant exam centres, and repeated application fees.

### 6. What do official statistics reveal about student suicides in India?
NCRB data from 2022 recorded 13,044 student suicides, with 2,248 attributed to examination failure, while an IC3 Institute analysis logged over 1 lakh student suicides between 2013 and 2022.

## Inspiration & Lessons
Ramabai Ranveer's courageous run exemplifies the boundless resilience of a mother committed to empowering her daughters through education.

- **Overcoming severe adversity through sheer resolve:** Serving as the sole breadwinner through domestic work after her husband's demise, Ramabai refused to compromise on her daughters' higher education. True determination turns daily hardship into purposeful action for the next generation.
- **Adapting swiftly when obstacles arise:** When her footwear lost traction on the wet road, she discarded her slippers and pressed forward barefoot without hesitation. Achieving difficult goals often requires discarding comfort and adapting instantly to harsh conditions.
- **Prioritizing education above all hardship:** Running three kilometres barefoot for a ₹3,000 prize illustrates the immense value a working mother places on learning. Sacrificing personal comfort to support educational pursuits remains the most transformative investment any family can make.

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