School fees doubled in 3 years and kids are being expelled for not paying, is this education or extortion?

A LocalCircles survey talked to 31,000 parents across 309 districts. 44 percent said schools hiked fees by 50 to 80 percent in just 3 years. 8 percent said the hike was over 80 percent. One parent reported their son's annual fee jumped from Rs 93,400 in 2020 to Rs 1,89,096 in 2025. More than double. In 5 years. What is your salary growth in the same period? Probably 10 to 20 percent. But school fees doubled. How is any middle class family supposed to keep up? And it gets worse. In Delhi, DPS Dwarka allegedly confined students to the library and expelled them over pending fees. Let me repeat that. They locked kids in the library because their parents had not paid fees. Kids. In a library. As punishment for their parents not being able to afford the fees. Is this a school or a loan recovery office? This is not an isolated incident. Protests have erupted in Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru. Parents are frustrated and angry. 93 percent of parents in the survey said state govts have failed to curb fee hikes. 93 percent. That is almost everyone. The Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that states can regulate fees. But enforcement remains weak. Schools keep hiking fees every year and nobody stops them. Schools claim rising costs. Teachers salaries, infrastructure, electricity, transport. But here is the thing. Teacher salaries in most private schools are barely Rs 15,000 to Rs 25,000 per month. The schools are collecting Rs 1 to 2 lakh per student per year. If a school has 2,000 students, that is Rs 20 to 40 crore in fees alone. How much of that actually goes to teachers and infrastructure? Most of it goes to the school owners as profit. Private schools in India are businesses, not charities. They exist to make money. And they have figured out that parents will pay anything for their kids education because there is no alternative. Govt schools are in terrible condition. So parents are forced to send kids to private schools. And private schools exploit this helplessness. They hike fees every year because they know parents have no choice. Where is the govt in all this? State govts have fee regulation committees but they are toothless. Schools just ignore them or find loopholes. Some schools split fees into tuition, transport, activity, development, and other categories to bypass fee caps on tuition. The actual total fee is way higher than what the committee approved. The govt needs to step in with real enforcement. Cap total fees including all categories. Audit school finances. Make them show where the money goes. If a school is making 300 percent profit on fees, that is not education, that is exploitation. And expelling kids for nonpayment? That should be illegal. You cannot punish a child for their parents financial situation. Has the private school mafia in India gone completely out of control?