Srinagar, July 20 -- By Mohammad Anamul Haque Ahanger

Four in the afternoon, and the roads outside the valley's coaching hubs fill with exhaustion.

Overhead, billboards display the faces of teenage "toppers," their exam scores converted into advertising for competing coaching empires. Below, students spill out of glass-fronted buildings in matching hoodies, backpacks heavy, and eyes hollowed by fatigue.

Their communication move fast: fractional marks, mock rankings, and the narrow margins that separate success from family disappointment.

This is the ground floor of a merit race that has come to define Kashmiri youth.

Decades of instability left the private sector underdeveloped, so the state became the only employer that felt dependa...