Sasaram railway station in Bihar has become a knowledge hub kind place as thousands of students use it as a coaching center for clearing their competitive exams
Sasaram, a city located in Bihar, is well known for its railway station the ‘ Sasaram Junction’. Let’s know what makes this small railway station such a popular place:
Electricity has a big issue in small towns of India however our exams never wait for power supply to come again so we can resume our studies. Bihar, like many other Indian states, faces a severe power crisis too.
Bihar, which is known as the backbone of Indian Administrative Machinery, accounts for nearly 450 out of total 5,500 IAS officers in the country and almost 25 per cent of the 700 candidates, who qualified for IAS and IPS.
But for doing so well in competitive exams, not every student gets required facilities.
That’s when Sasaram Railway station became a study hub for thousands of candidates appearing for exams because of its 24/7 electricity that never goes out. The trend is not a recent thing that happened but it started back in 2002-2003 when only a small group of students came there to study together on the platform.
The students who gather on the platform to study are popularly known as “station-wale students”.
Most of the students here prepare to compete for clerical jobs in the Indian railways and state-run banks, two of India’s biggest employers, or major competitive exams. Not only students who are preparing for exams but also senior students visit this place to coach younger boys, which has now become a ritual over the years. The number of boys who are reported to be studying here have been more that 1000.
In morning, Sasaram station is not any different from other railway stations but after the sun sets down and electricity cut starts at students home, hundreds of students head to the platform number 1 and 2 to study together. The students who cannot afford coaching centers make this platform their study hub for at least 2 hours a day.
The students who have studied at that station stated that, ‘ We study together and engage in group discussions. This helps us in cracking the exams easily’ they also stated that about 100 station-wale students qualify for different government jobs, mostly in the railways and banks and even cleared the prestigious civil services examination. As per a news reports their study group is called ‘The quiz’ which involves sets of questions on a variety of subjects: Current affairs, mathematics, reasoning and language.