The last few years have seen the business of private coaching bureaus and tuitions growing at a rapid pace. Indeed, the formal education system has now become peripheral in imparting lessons. It only serves as a licensed examination-taking body. Tutors have taken over the job of training young minds to learn and apply the Three Rs. A flourishing sunrise business, the turnovers of tutorials and coaching centres have leapfrogged to mindboggling levels. An approximate idea of the turnovers in terms of money generated by tutorials can be had from the fact that even the most humble tutor earns an average of Rs 6,000 a month. The larger bureaus that take four to five batches a month, earn many times more. Here the fee levied per student ranges between Rs 18,000 and Rs 25,000 for about eight months of coaching. Each batch has approximately 120-150 students. This works out to about Rs 21, 60,000 for the bureau and this is a very conservative estimate. If one takes the income of each of these private tutors and coaching centres, the figure runs into tens of crores annually, says Aradhika Sekhon