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| Mother Preparing Her Daughter For School/Image Credit: Mehmet Turgut Krikgoz |
By the time a child in our cities begins wobbling proudly on two feet, their parents have already learnt the art of balancing on a financial tightrope. There was a time, not very long ago, when new parents discussed prams with suspension wheels and which diapers didn’t leak at night. Now those same parents huddle over fee circulars the way earlier generations huddled over exam results.
In one Bengaluru WhatsApp group, a mother recently typed, “I think we should choose the school first, then choose the stroller to match the fee structure.” People responded with laughing emojis, the kind that hide a sigh underneath. Hope and helplessness sit side by side these days.
Because in our metros, a school admission is no longer just a milestone; it is a moment that rearranges the furniture of a family’s life — literally, sometimes. Budgets shift, apartments change, savings plans evaporate like spilled milk, and dreams get folded into neat little monthly instalments.
And just when parents think they have understood the numbers, another layer appears.
Every April brings a fresh set of charges, each more dignified-sounding than the last: development fees, enhancement fees, resource fees. Words that seem to promise the future but often deliver only a dent in the present.
Take Meera from Noida, for instance. A woman of patience, resilience, and the kind of optimism that survives on two cups of chai. She walked into her son Raghav’s school one morning and discovered a new line on the slip: Development Fee – ₹12,500.
She looked around the familiar corridor like a detective surveying a crime scene. The paint still flaked near the switchboard. The classroom door still needed a push, then a prayer. The ceiling fan above Raghav’s seat still made its loyal, prehistoric whirr.
So she asked, voice steady, “What development, exactly?”
The clerk, without lifting his head, delivered a line worthy of philosophical literature:
“Ma’am, development is an ongoing process.”
A beautiful sentence, if only someone handed her a translation. She paid anyway. Mothers in this country often pay first and breathe later.
In Hyderabad, Farhan faced a different wonder of modern schooling — the Learning Enhancement Kit. Priced at ₹28,000, it came in a glossy bag that looked like it should contain a laptop. Inside, however, was a tablet so light it could have flown away with a strong sneeze, two apps his daughter never opened, and a workbook photocopied with such devotion that even the smudges were consistent.
Farhan, who repairs his own gadgets with YouTube tutorials, inspected the tablet and muttered, “My old phone has more processing power.”
At the PTA meeting, when he asked gently how often children used this state-of-the-art kit, the teacher smiled with tired honesty.
“Oh sir… mostly for marking attendance. They still learn everything from the whiteboard.”
Farhan nodded the way a man nods when he has no energy left to argue with fate.
Meanwhile in Mumbai, Sunita carried her son’s resource list to the designated vendor, expecting a bill, not a revelation. The total came to ₹15,200. As she walked out, she spotted one of the same storybooks at a roadside stall for ₹299 — the kind of stall where books smell like old paper and optimism. The school-labeled version she had purchased was ₹550.
She asked the shopkeeper why. He lowered his voice as if the pavement had ears.
“Madam… school price. We just follow.”
That evening, Sunita placed the bag of books on the dining table and sat silently for a minute, not because the number shocked her, but because she knew this was only the beginning. There would be the uniform vendor next, the transport fee after that, and the technology fee that arrives unfailingly even when technology doesn’t.
These stories echo across India’s cities like a chorus of reluctant humour and quiet exhaustion. Parents shifting from 2BHKs to 1BHKs not because of school distance but because of school transport. Fathers driving cabs on weekends under an alias so colleagues won’t know. Mothers returning to work not out of ambition but out of arithmetic. Couples whispering, with guilt in their throats, that maybe they cannot afford a second child.
It isn’t just money that these fees take; they take the margin of peace in a household, the buffer where small joys once lived.
But if you look closely — at Meera adjusting the strap of her cloth bag, at Farhan queuing outside the school gate, at Sunita carrying books heavier than her sigh — you’ll see something else too. A quiet, stubborn hope. A belief that if they stretch a little more, adjust a little more, their children will have the childhood they dreamed of.
In the end, school fees are reshaping more than budgets. They are reshaping what it means to be middle class in urban India — the sacrifices, the calculations, the whispered worries, and the fierce, unwavering love that makes parents endure it all.
And tomorrow morning, they will wake up, pack tiffins, tie shoelaces, squeeze themselves into traffic, and send their children off with a smile — because that is one fee they never hesitate to pay.
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