I have a Solution that will reduce pressure on IIT aspirants but do not know how to get this across to HRD Minister of India. Suggestions are welcome. - Ram Krishnaswamy

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Sunday, April 30, 2017

IIT Aspirant In Rajasthan Hangs Himself To Death For Failing To Qualify JEE-Advanced - Huffington Post

Although no note was recovered. 
29/04/2017 11:33 AM IST | 


                   FERGREGORY


KOTA (RAJASTHAN) -- An IIT aspirant allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself from the ceiling fan of his hostel room here after failing to qualify for the JEE(Advanced) exam.
The body of Arijeet (19), a resident of Nawabganj in West Bengal, was recovered late in this evening. He had been preparing for IIT (Mains) exam at a primer coaching institute here, a police official said.

No note was recovered from the room but his friends in the hostel said that he was depressed over failing to qualify for JEE (Advanced), sub-inspector Ramswroop at Mahaveer Nagar Police Station said.
The body is kept in the mortuary of MBS hospital and post-mortem will be conducted on Saturday after the arrival of his parents, the officer said

Results of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE)-Main, were announced yesterday. Out of the over 11.8 lakh students who appeared for the examination for admission to various IITs and engineering colleges, around 2.2 lakhs have qualified for the second and final round -- the JEE (Advanced).

Also on HuffPost India


Engineering aspirant commits suicide in Kota after failing to clear JEE Main - Hindustan Times


More than 60 students have committed suicide in the past six years in Kota, the coaching hub of India.

INDIA Updated: Apr 28, 2017 22:20 Ist


HT Correspondent 
Hindustan Times, Kota

An engineering aspirant on Friday committed suicide in Kota, India’s coaching hub, in Rajasthan after failing to clear JEE (Main), the results of which were announced the day before.
Arijit Pramanick from West Bengal hanged himself at his hostel room in the Mahaveer Nagar area of the Kota City in the evening, police said.
According to an estimate, more than 1.5 lakh students from across the country enroll in the 40-odd coaching institutes in the city every year to prepare for different entrance examinations.
But of late the institutes have come under the scanner after a string of suicides by students, most of them due to study-related stress and burden of family expectations.

More than 60 students have committed suicide in the past six years, most of them attributed to the fear of failure. Two students took the extreme step this year, while 17 ended their life last year.
To curb the menace, several coaching institutes last year jointly launched a round-the-clock helpline to offer counselling, track callers suffering from depression and provide assistance.
Police recovered Pramanick’s body after the hostel owner informed them about the tragedy.
Circle Inspector of the city’s Mahaveer Nagar police station Pramod Sharma said though no suicide note was found, prima facie it appears that the student took his life for failing to qualify for the Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced).
He said Pramanick had been living in the hostel for the past one year and was preparing for JEE Mains and JEE Advanced from a local coaching institute.
He said the post-mortem would be conducted after the arrival of the parents of the deceased.

IIT aspirant fails to qualify for JEE-Advanced, commits suicide - One India


19-year-old Arijeet had been preparing for the IIT (Mains) exam at a premier coaching institute in Kota. Updated: Saturday, April 29, 2017, 12:22 [IST]



Kota (Raj), April 29: An IIT aspirant allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself from the ceiling fan of his hostel room after failing to qualify the JEE (Advanced) exam. The body of Arijeet (19), a resident of Nawabganj in West Bengal, was recovered late last evening.

Representational Image He had been preparing for the IIT (Mains) exam at a premier coaching institute, a police official said.

No note was recovered from the room but his friends in the hostel said that he was depressed over failing to qualify for JEE (Advanced), Sub-Inspector at Mahaveer Nagar Police Station, Ramswroop, said. The body has been kept in the mortuary of MBS hospital and the post-mortem will be conducted today, the officer said. Results of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE)-Main, were announced on Thursday. Out of the over 11.8 lakh students who appeared for the examination for admission to various IITs and engineering colleges, around 2.2 lakh have qualified for the second and final round -- the JEE (Advanced). PTI



IITs to have wellness centres - The Hindu

PTI
MUMBAI APRIL 28, 2017 22:16 IST

                    Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar  

Concerned over the increasing number of ‘campus suicides’, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will now have wellness centres to help students deal with mental stress and a ‘non-academic’ induction programme for freshers.

A decision in this regard was taken at a meeting of the IIT Council, the apex coordination body for 23 IITs across the country.

During the meeting, chaired by Union Human Resources Development Minister Prakash Javadekar, the plan to increase representation of women in the IITs by introducing a supernumerary quota was also approved. “For freshers joining IITs, there will be an induction programme which will help them adjust to the atmosphere at the institute besides other things,” he said here.


IITs to start induction event for freshers - DNA India


A student from IIT-Kharagpur recently surrendered his will to live

 KRITIKA SHARMA | Sat, 29 Apr 2017-08:00am , DNA


The move is aimed at curbing rising incidents of on-campus suicides; IIT Council also approves increasing seats for girls

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will soon have an extensive induction programme for freshers in order to acclamatise them to the new environment. This decision was taken in order to make students more comfortable and prevent incidents of on-campus suicide.

This decision was taken in a meeting of the IIT Council on Friday, with the council discussing the rising incidents of student suicides for the first time. The meeting was chaired by HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar and attended by the Directors of the seven older IITs.

The council has also given its approval for increasing seats for girl students across IITs. The minister said that the government wants to take the ratio of girl students in IITs to 20 per cent from the existing 8 per cent.

“We have planned many activities in the IITs so that students are not left alone. For instance, there will be a wellness centre in each IIT to take care of the mental and physical well-being of students,” Javadekar said.

After the council’s meeting, the 23 IITs have been urged to undertake a number of new initiatives to prevent suicides on campus. Apart from the compulsory induction programme, teaching students ways of coping with stress and referring them to on-campus counsellors will also be carried out.

Rising incidents of suicide have been a cause of worry for the IITs recently. This year itself, three students from various IITs committed suicide, with the latest being a student of Aerospace Engineering from IIT Kharagpur.

In the seven-hour long IIT Council meeting, which took place in Mumbai, numerous issues were taken up.

“Numerous female students pass the JEE advance entrance test but do not eventually take admission into IIT. We studied this and have prepared an action plan. We want to take their numbers to 20 per cent and many more female students should take up admissions in IIT. From this viewpoint, many schemes to encourage girl students, such as merit scholarships, etc, have been formulated,” Javadekar said.

Further, it has also been proposed that meritorious students who can work on research and innovation will be provided with funds of Rs 75,000 from the Prime Minister Scholarship Scheme.

PUTTING OUT THE WELCOME MAT
  • The IIT Council has told the 23 IITs to undertake a number of new initiatives to prevent suicides on campus. Apart from the compulsory induction programme, teaching students ways of coping with stress and referring them to on-campus counsellors will also be carried out.
  • This year itself, three students from various IITs committed suicide.

IIT Council chaired by Prakash Javadekar discusses fee waiver, student suicides - Financial Expess

While talking about the fee waiver issue on Friday, the IIT council in Mumbai chaired by Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar directed the institutes to continue with their existing fee structure for a year

By: FE Online | Published: April 29, 2017 1:07 PM

In the meeting, Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar expressed concern over the suicides committed by IITians. (PTI)

While talking about the fee waiver issue on Friday, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) council in Mumbai chaired by Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar directed the institutes to continue with their existing fee structure for a year. Other issues that were raised included the number of student suicides that took place in the IITs in the recent past. In the meeting, Javadekar expressed concern over the suicides committed by three IIT Kharagpur students earlier this year – despite dedicated systems in place, according to an Indian express report.

The report also stated that in reference to student suicides, he instructed the institutes to stretch orientation programmes for the first-year students to a long-duration from the current two-day orientation programme. The aim is to help the new students adjust to the pressure and adapt to cultural diversity. The council has also decided to transform counselling centres on the campus into wellness centres to focus on the well-being of the students in IITs.

Other points that were discussed included ways to increase the number of women students in these institutes. From currently limited to eight percent, the focus is to reach to more than 20 percent. For this, “supernumerary seats will be added to institutes,” said Javadekar as quoted by The Indian Express.

WATCH | Union Minister Prakash Javadekar releases ‘INDIA RANKINGS 2017’

Council discusses fee waiver, suicides: No change in IIT fee structure this year - Indian Express



The discussion took place during a meeting of the IIT Council in Mumbai, chaired by Javadekar.
Written by Priyanka Sahoo | Mumbai | Updated: April 29, 2017 2:27 pm

                               Prakash Javadekar

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) on Friday discussed the issue of replacing a fee waiver for economically backward students with interest-free loans. However, Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar directed the institutes to continue with their existing fee structure for a year.
The discussion took place during a meeting of the IIT Council in Mumbai, chaired by Javadekar.

The rising student suicides in IITs — three IIT Kharagpur students committed suicide this year— was also discussed. The minister expressed concern over the occurrences despite dedicated systems in place and instructed the IITs to conduct long-term orientation programmes for first-year students.
While currently first-year students are made to undergo a two-day orientation, the council has decided to hold orientations for longer duration to help them adjust to the pressure and adapt to cultural diversity.

“Several measures are already in place to help students cope with anxiety, depression and pressure. We have been increasingly hiring counsellors and psychiatrists. We are seeing suicides despite such measures. The institutes will have to contemplate better solutions,” said Gautam Biswas, Director, IIT Guwahati.

The council has decided to transform counselling centres on the campus into wellness centres to focus on holistic well-being of the students. This will also help eliminate the stigma around counselling centres, it said.

Javadekar, who is the chairman of the council, said a flurry of initiatives were introduced to convert all IITs into institutes of eminence. Each IIT will have to prepare a three-year action plan, a seven-year strategic plan and a 15-year long-term plan to realise this goal and the plans will be discussed in later meetings.

One of the reforms is to increase the number of women students in IITs — currently pegged at 8 per cent — to more than 20 per cent. “Supernumerary seats will be added to institutes as need be,” said Javadekar.

To curb the outflow of research scholars from the country, the council has proposed incentives for PhD scholars. Fourth-year engineering students with excellent academic record will be granted a scholarship of Rs 75,000 a month under the Prime Minister Scholarship Scheme for pursuing PhDs in IITs. The proposal will be tabled in the Union cabinet, said the minister.
Javadekar announced that the Centre will raise Rs 20,000 crore in three years to fund research in premier institutes including IITs.

Saturday, April 29, 2017

IITs as accreditation agency under study - The Hindu


APRIL 27, 2017 21:49 IST


Council meet today to discuss student suicides too

The Indian Institutes of Technology are likely to have the additional role of accreditation and assessing agency soon, with the IIT Council meet in Mumbai on Friday expected to discuss the possibility.

Minister for Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar threw ample hints about this at an event here a few days back.
“On 28th the IIT Council will meet. We told the IITs you too can become accreditation agencies. There is NAAC... If there are four-five agencies for accreditation, it is good. There will automatically be a competition and that will be good,” he had said at the consultation meet of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council.

“I don’t know how much NAAC people accept it. But it is not a bad thought. If we want to reach each institute and assess them properly, we need more wherewithal and therefore [we should] build three-four more institutes which will also become assessing agencies.”

“There should be a new system of accreditation [and] that is our effort. Inspection is important as we get to know looking at data what is the truth,” the Minister had said minutes earlier.

Centre’s guidelines
The IIT Council meet comes at a time when there is concern over suicides in the institutes. This, too, may come up for discussion at the meet.

The Centre had, after the Rohith Vemula suicide at the Hyderabad University, sought to create a set of guidelines to ensure that students are not driven to the extreme step.
They were expected to include steps such as mentoring and counselling of students.

Increase in seats
The IIT Council had last year given its in-principle approval to an increase in seats in the IITs, with a vision to touch one lakh seats by 2020. This, however, is subject to each IIT’s preparedness.

Recently, the IITs agreed to add some seats temporarily to increase the representation of women to 20 per cent.
The Council may undertake some stock-taking on these points too.

Friday, April 28, 2017

After nearly 6 years, IIT Council to discuss rising student suicides - Indian Express


According to sources, directors of 23 IITs will be urged to undertake a number of new initiatives, in addition to the existing measures, to stem this unsettling trend.


Written by Ritika Chopra | New Delhi | Updated: April 27, 2017 9:18 am

Unable to stem student suicides, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are expected to come under the government scanner at the forthcoming meeting of the IIT Council on Friday.  Campus suicides were included in the agenda of the Council meeting at the last minute after a final-year aerospace engineering student of IIT-Kharagpur, Nidhin, killed himself in his hostel room last week.

According to sources, directors of 23 IITs will be urged to undertake a number of new initiatives, in addition to the existing measures, to stem this unsettling trend. These include steps such as compulsory induction programme for all students to teach them ways of coping with stress, early identification of vulnerable and academically weak students and referring them to counsellors on campus and sensitisation of faculty members to needs of students with different learning abilities.

That apart, directors will be asked to encourage students to pursue extra-curricular activities. The IIT administration will also be asked to use hostels to promote healthy peer group interaction by having students from different departments as roommates.

The issue of student suicides will be taken up at the Council meeting after almost six years. In 2011, under the then HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, the Council had decided to set up a task force. In 2010 and 2011, there were 12 student suicides across IITs. That panel had recommended dedicated system for students’ mental health needs.

Earlier this week, the HRD Ministry had assured Congress MP K C Venugopal that it would probe the circumstances that led to the Nidhin’s death and the spate of suicides at IIT-Kharagpur.

“The official assured me that  a team headed by a director of the ministry will be appointed to probe the cases of alleged suicides happening in IIT-Kharagpur,” Venugopal had told reporters this week.

This is the third IIT Kharagpur student to commit suicide this year. In March a final year M.Tech student was found hanging in his hostel room on campus. On January 16, a third-year student left the institute campus and killed himself by jumping in front of a moving train.

For all the latest India News, download Indian Express App now

First Published on: April 27, 2017 5:32 am

Thursday, April 27, 2017

Why 57 Young Students Have Taken Their Lives In Kota - Huffington Post

01/06/2016 4:52 PM IST | Updated 19 hours ago

Journalist

ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010 photograph, students attend a class at a cram school in Kota, India. Every year, more than 450,000 students take the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) exam, hoping for entry to the hallowed public engineering institutes located across India. Slightly more than 13,000 passed in 2010, a 3 percent success rate. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das)

KOTA, RAJASTHAN: In Kota, everyone has a theory about Kriti Tripathi. On 28th April, the 17-year-old IIT aspirant jumped to her death from the top of a five-storey building. Just the day before, she had cleared the first stage of the IIT entrance exam. Tripathi is only one of the seven students in Kota to have ended their lives so far this year, but her story was different from most others: She wasn't led to suicide because of failure or the fear of it. It is this aberration that has upset the internal logic of the Kota universe.

"Sorry for being weak, and not showing courage, but I am tired now, no strength left," Tripathi wrote in a five-page suicide letter that exposes the emotional cost at which the Indian middle class chases its biggest status symbol--a seat at one of the uber-prestigious engineering colleges called the Indian Institute of Technology.

The Indian Institutes of Technology were conceived as a post-independence nation-building project, "representing India's urges, India's future in the making", in the words of the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1956. Over the following 60 years, the institutes went from acting as the generator of an emerging India's technological capital to becoming a force of social distinction for its globalized middle classes. The harder it became to get into an IIT—over a million students compete for the top 5,000 seats today--the shinier a prospective future became. The IIT brand is furthered every day by its habitually overachieving alumni. The Indian-origin CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, is an IITian, so is billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, among a galaxy of other global marquee names. In fact when Satya Nadella became the CEO at Microsoft, it was considered remarkable that he was not from an IIT.

Naturally, a sizeable prep industry has taken deep roots.
Coaching for the two-part entrance exam to the sixteen functioning IITs—which test quantitative aptitude of high school graduates in Physics, Chemistry and Math—is today a multi-million-dollar industry. Its nerve centre is Kota, a small town in Rajasthan where some 150,000 students are enrolled in a cluster of coaching institutes any time of the year. The town's hyper competitive coaching institutes have earned a reputation for helping students "crack" the IIT entrance. Thousands have made it since the business picked up in the early 2000s.

But it can also be deadly. In the past five years, 57 students have committed suicide.

                 Students in a Kota coaching institute.

I don't even have to arrive in Kota to hear the first theory about Kriti Tripathi. It comes from the girl sitting next to me on the state transport bus leaving Jaipur, as we settle in for a five-hour ride through sun-scorched badlands. Like Tripathi, Shruti Bhatt is 17, and came to Kota two years ago. Both were among the 1,54,032 students (of 12.07 lakh) who scored enough in the JEE (Mains) exams on 4 April to try the next level, JEE (Advanced), scheduled for 21 May.
So, what does she think of the suicide?
"It has to be the marks. See, she got 144 in Mains, and it's not a bad number, but it's not a very good number, either. It's only 44 marks above the cutoff of 100. In Advanced you have to compete with two lakh students for 20,000 seats, so the pressure is insane."
It's that stress she's currently facing. There are only ten days left for the Advanced part and, at 125, her Mains score is well below Tripathi's. At her coaching institute, Resonance, she's been stuck in an "average" batch, A6 (in an order descending from A1 to A8, leaving aside the 20 students at the very top, the so-called IPs, or Illuminated Promoters), since she first came to Kota. Until the day of the exam, therefore, she is going to put in ten hours of study time every day.

The harder it became to get into an IIT—over a million students compete for the top 5,000 seats today-- the future an admission guaranteed became shinier.

"JEE Advanced—it's a matter of respect," she says fiercely.
It's also a matter of return on investment. This is what her parents, both teachers at a local college in Udaipur, have spent over the basics of the Kota setup for two years: coaching institute= ₹2,13,000; hostel= ₹3,36,000; dummy school = ₹60,000. Total= ₹6,09,000 (or $10,150). (Students who come to Kota typically enrol in a dummy school here--they don't attend it, but these shell outfits help ensure the paper work required to progress through the school system till class 12, which you need to clear to be able to take the IIT entrance. There are hundreds of such schools in this town.)
I ask Bhatt if she's worried about how they would feel if she doesn't make it to an IIT. "Of course. They don't say anything to me, but no matter how parents behave on the outside, none of them are ever cool with their children not making it."
I ask her what typically happens after students hear of a suicide. "No one talks about it, except maybe for a few words exchanged at the hostel reception while going through the front page of the newspaper." There is a lot on their plate already. When the bus stutters into its slot at the Kota bus stand later that day, Bhatt rushes off even before I can haul my luggage off the overhead rack.

****

I wonder if there could possibly be anyone busier than her in Kota at this point, until I meet the owner of her coaching institute, Resonance Eduventures. RK Verma is fussing with an Excel sheet full of numbers in the home-office in his high-security mansion. Verma's is one of the top five institutes in Kota that corner the city's $45 million coaching industry. Like the rest of city's coaching millionaires, Verma has built his empire by filling in the gap between the varying—and largely subjective—mode of science education taught in secondary schools and the logic-based, problem-solving format of the IIT-JEE paper. It's the reason a good many of the nearly 80,000 students who arrive in Kota every year do so while they are in their seventh or eighth grade in school.
If a student comes to Kota in class seven, at the age of 12 or 13, she will spend five years in this town, never attending regular schools with swings and playgrounds, negotiating maths and physics for the world's most competitive examination, in pursuit of a future she can't relate with. Parents can end up spending ₹15-20 lakh over five or six years. Many take loans. Children hear often about the struggle of repayments.


A cow standing in front of a cram school billboard eats the leaves of roasted ears of corn left by students outside a school in Kota, India.

The first time Verma heard of the IITs, he was an 11th standard student at a government school. "I used to cycle ten kilometres there every day from my village in Kota district, where my father worked as a stone-cutter. One day a man from Delhi shows up at our school and starts talking about the IIT. It's a magical thing, he told us. If you cracked it, your life could get much bigger--you will travel in airplanes and will be surrounded by assistants. His words stuck with me."
Over the next two years, Verma solved every JEE question of the previous 15 years. In 1990, he cleared the examination easily. But, after graduating from IIT-Madras, he couldn't crack the exams for the Indian Administrative Service, and returned to take tuitions in Kota. For someone who remains proud of the fact that he "took no guidance to crack the IIT", Verma is today a leading light of India's IIT-JEE economy. In the year 2015-16, his company, Resonance, took in 50,000 students in 30 branches nationwide. His 800 teachers include 100 IITians, paid anywhere between ₹20 lakh to ₹1 crore a year.

"So when the kids come to Kota, those who got 90 percent in 10th board get 20 percent in our tests. Bachche se sehen nahin hota hai (the child cannot tolerate it)."

I ask him if he's heard of Kriti Tripathi. "See I'm not good with names," he says, "but if you mean one of the students who have committed suicide, then you have to understand that it's totally wrong to blame the coaching institutes. There are so many reasons. Or sometimes you can keep guessing. Just one month back, we admitted a girl and in three weeks, she had killed herself. This was before she had been put through a single test, so you can't say it's because of low numbers."
The problem, he tells me, jabbing at his keyboard, begins at schools. "Bachchon ko schools mein phaltu mein, phokat mein numbers de dete hain... (In Indian schools, children get good grades without making any effort) One lakh kids got 10 CGPA all over India in last year's 10th boards. Parents will then tell you 'ki mera bacha toh bahut intelligent hai (my child is very intelligent)'. But it's another thing altogether to crack IIT. So when the kids come to Kota, those who got 90 percent in 10th board get 20 percent in our tests. Bachche se sehen nahin hota hai (the child cannot tolerate it)" Verma also has a theory on why the children can't tolerate what he sees as a reality check. "Pampering itni ho gayi hai bachhon ki. Pehle schools mein pitai ho jaati thi. Ghar pe kabhi mummy peet deti thi, kabhi papa peet dete the. Aadmi ko hardship sehne ki training milti rehti thi chhote chhote madhyam se (They are so pampered these days. Earlier, they were beaten up in school from time to time or at home. Their capacity for tolerance kept building up bit by bit)"

***

Rakesh Sharma has definitely heard of Kriti Tripathi. As the general manager of Vibrant Classes, where she was enrolled for two years, he's frequently had to explain what he thinks of her suicide in the previous two weeks. "The first thing is that she didn't take the step because of study pressure, because she was very good at studies. She was a good performer here at Vibrant. Secondly, why would anyone who got good marks in JEE Mains end their life before the final?"


Flyers handed out to students coming out of cram schools advertising for competing schools lie on the road in Kota, India.
I remind him of the suicide letter in which Tripathi made it clear that no matter how good or bad she may have been, the JEE was certainly not something she wanted to do. "Vibrant didn't go to her house and force her to come here," Sharma shoots back. "Why do people look at coaching institutes every time someone commits suicide in Kota when there are so many other things that drive them to it? -- parents' expectations, peer pressure, love affairs."
Sharma doesn't mention the coaching institutes' notorious survival-of-the-fittest aligning of students on the basis of performance in internal tests. Every big institute in Kota has an average of eight "batches", in descending order from 1 to 8, of a hundred or so students each across four or five main groups formed on the basis of time of admission, such as A to D. The treatment you get at a coaching institute, from the quality of teachers to the level of attention, depends on your position on this ladder. And although four or five "reshuffles" take place over a year, very little movement happens.
I ask him if it wouldn't be easier on students to not have to see each other as fellow contestants on a two-year-long Hunger Games-style reality game show while they are dealing with all the pressure. "If you are talking about batch segregation, it is for the students' benefit only... A student who is in at level 8 at the beginning could very well jump to level 2 at the end. IIT-JEE is not a selection exam, but an elimination exam. Only those who are perfect get to IIT."
The biggest issue facing students in Kota, Sharma then astutely reminded me, wasn't parents or peers or breakups, but their inability to manage their time. "Most students go to sleep at 12 at night and wake up at 10 in the morning. By the time they finish with their morning routine—bath, breakfast, etc—it's 11:30. If they sit down to work then, they have only an hour before they have to get ready and start for the institute for their class at 1 p.m. The biggest problem we have in Kota is poor time management. If the students do what they are supposed to--sleep at 11 at night, wake up at 6 in the morning, and devote the time before and after the classes to studying on their own—then we wouldn't face so many issues."

The call centre looks like something erected in a state of emergency: a cramped pre-fab enclosure hunched in the belly of a building large enough to be mistaken for a whole university.

At Allen Career Institute, they are done with the guessing game. The biggest player in the local coaching market has tired of taking the blame for Kota's suicides. In November 2015, after the city registered its 30th student suicide of the year, the institute set up a distress call centre for its 68,000 students, started morning yoga and meditation classes, hired a team of psychological counsellors to hear out the "advanced cases" and a couple of psychiatrists to take over the truly messed-up.
The call centre looks like something erected in a state of emergency: a cramped pre-fab enclosure hunched in the belly of a building large enough to be mistaken for a whole university. All I could hear in it was Kota jargon: booster-1 course, pre-nurture foundation fees, BITSAT workshop, Allen Champ programme. Only 40 of the 2,500 calls the centre gets from students every day are about personal issues, explained Pushpendra Rathod, one of the counsellors taking calls. "The rest are all academic queries." The last personal call he received was two days ago, from a student feeling homesick.
Things look way more intense in the wing housing the professional counsellors, which was probably a parking basement until recently. In one cubicle, a girl is sobbing into her handkerchief as a counsellor nods with empathy across the table. In the cubicle next to it, another counsellor is resting between student visits. Yashmeen Sahoo used to be a yoga and meditation specialist at Patanjali headquarters in Rishikesh. Most of her work at Allen involves working with a software program, however. "It has a database of each of the students' emotional states. Every teacher is assigned 100 students and is supposed to talk to at least one every day on a one-on-one basis and enter his feedback into the database, which is available to us, the institute and the parents to monitor. And if we see something odd, then someone from the call centre phones the student and suggests him or her to come and see one of us here."

            A coaching class in progress at Kota, Rajasthan.

"It can be anything," explains Rashi Mehta, who joins us from the next cubicle, after she has handled the weeping girl. "Her problem was that she felt every time she was in class, the room seemed to close in on her. She'd never been amongst so many strangers before. She also really missed listening to music; she is into classical music, particularly Kalyan raga. So, I told her to listen to it for a bit between assignments."
I ask Sahoo, then, what she thinks of a "case" like Kriti Tripathi's. "I just don't understand it. When you are so good at studies, how can you throw it away? She had everything. Her mother herself was staying with her in the P.G, attending to her every need. In some cases, you can never know why a student took this step."
Making my way out of the building, I run into a family from Gangapur, a three-hour train ride away. The parents want their 15-year-old daughter admitted into Allen for a pre-med programme. "It's her wish. And we will support her in whatever she wants to do," says the father, who has an optician's shop back home. They have been sitting in the lobby for a few hours, waiting to negotiate fees. "We thought it was 70,000 rupees," says the mother, "but this year they have raised it to 89,000, which is a lot." If they get a discount here, she tells me, they can afford to leave the daughter in one of the hostels run by Allen that cost 15,000 rupees a month for a room. ("extra for AC"). If not, she'd have to do with any of the mid-budget (6000-12000 rupees a month) accommodations for female students lining the streets in this part of Kota. Sometimes even money can't guarantee admission into the hostels run by top institutes, however; only those who apply as many as four years before their arrival in Kota get in.

"Unn bacchon ki dimagi haalat theek nahin hoti. (It's only the mentally disturbed children who do that)".

I ask the parents if they have been following the news of student suicides in Kota and if they are worried. "No," the mother says after a few moments of thoughtful silence, "Unn bacchon ki dimagi haalat theek nahin hoti. (It's only the mentally disturbed children who do that)".


****

"Who is your favorite hero???
Think...Think...Think... (Come on... no fancy names)
You are your favorite Hero (Girls, Pl don't frown...Hero can be both male and female)
Yes dear friend ... You are your favorite Hero...How can your movie be entertaining without Hero... (You)...So don't allow this Hero to fade away...He has to be there...He has to win over himself...
With great power comes great responsibility (Spiderman)...
But for this you have to be smiling and happy...Come what...What the Hell ☺ ☺
Happy New Year...Happy New You.......
In his 12 months as district magistrate of Kota, Ravi Kumar Surpur has written three letters to three different groups of people integral to the city's coaching business--institute owners, students and parents. They have been written in response to "20-24 suicide letters" from students he's read over the same time, including the five-page note left by Kriti Tripathi in which lays bare her complete distaste for the IIT rat race, emotional manipulation by her parents, the need to shut down coaching institutes ("they suck"), and the "maddening hatred in her heart" for herself.
If he's playful in his letter to children, Surpur tries for a balance between sympathy and reproof in addressing the parents ("Are we interested in making the child realise 'Your Dreams' at any cost or should it be like creating such situations that the child realizes His/Her Dreams?") and goes point-blank official in his notice to the owners, ordering them to make a number of changes to their system "with immediate effect", from refunding fees to kids who change their minds to organizing "fun days".

                        A student at a hostel in Kota.

He's fighting administrative fire on the day I visit him in Kota's sprawling Collectorate; his white board is scribbled over with the district's immediate concerns—pre-monsoon preparations, seasonal disasters, price management. But he can't think of anything more important than the situation with the students in Kota that he's previously called the "tip of the iceberg." "You should have seen the mood in the city last December, just before New Year's. A student had committed suicide and my first thought was to order the institutes to declare a compulsory holiday on 1st January to give the students a breather, but then I reminded myself that only a small proportion of children, those from the state, will be able to go home to celebrate, but the rest will just be here and brood. So I asked the institutes to put up giant canvases in the premises and let the kids come over and paint. And oh they painted like anything! I also asked the radio city FM to take song requests from the students on the day."
Surpur's made it his personal mission since to bring down the IIT-JEE heat in Kota, whether it's asking the students to get up early and appreciate the sunrise or informing the parents of the new avenues of opportunity ("Art, Entertainment, Sports, Literature, Journalism, Event Management.") On the very day that I saw him, he was drafting a multi-page, multiple-choice questionnaire inquiring into the student experience in Kota that he wants massively distributed and anonymously answered. I ask him why he spends so much of his time finding the elusive solution to the suicides: "Even if one single child doesn't commit suicide because of this, it's worthwhile."

"If 1.5 lakh people are living in one place, there will be one suicide every month. It's the state's average or the national average."

The view of student suicides is a little more complicated at the office of the Superintendent of Police of the Kota district. "If 1.5 lakh people are living in one place, there will be one suicide every month. It's the state's average or the national average. If think of the 1.5 lakh students in Kota in that way, then the rate of suicide would be considered normal for a year, but of course it's not so simple a story," says Sawai Singh Godara, who cuts an imposing figure with his medals and moustache. "Kids who come from villages, from a lower middle class background, they are able to adjust. But those who come from upper class families, who have been maintained like a flower by their own parents, they don't know how to deal with the routine here. Khana suit nahin hota, pet kharab ho jata hai, ulcer ho jata hai, so they get depressed (The food doesn't suit them, their stomachs get upset, sometimes it leads to ulcer...)"
India's annual suicide rate (number of suicides a year in a population of 100,000) was 10.6. But this view camouflages the horror of the Kota story. A vast majority of those who commit suicides (more than 69% in 2014), are low-income. Suicide rates are also very high at the lower end of the education level spectrum. When applied to a population of well-off teenagers with higher secondary education, Kota deaths are off the charts.
There are several other reasons, of course, for their depression, Godara points out: "Social status. Parents are calling their children here, telling them this person or that person's kid in the neighborhood cleared IIT. They remind their children of the Fixed Deposits they have broken, the Provident Fund loans they have taken. The institutes themselves have a role to play; until we enforced it a few months ago, there was no exit policy for those children who wanted to leave. 10 to 15 percent of it is because of love affairs—breakups, cheating."
I asked him what he thought of the case of Kriti Tripathi. It made him turn to an assistant on his left and ask him how much the girl scored in Mains. "See, 144 is not a very good rank," Godara swung around to face me armed with his theory. "People score as high as 300. She must be disappointed."

****

"Hamare system se chalein, toh Kota mein koi suicide hi na kare."
(If things go by our system, no one would ever commit suicide in Kota)
Kamal Jain is the head of the biggest organized setup offering out-of-station parents paid-for "local guardians". For a monthly fee of ₹300, this is the what Jain and his team at Local Guardian and Consultant, "a complete solution for liable and organize care of your child", provide: "room arrangement, mess arrangement for balanced food, vehicle arrangement, commodity requirement, doctor arrangement, mobile top-ups, special protection of female students, travel ticket booking, discussion of personal problems, and career counselling".
Jain was originally a businessman who dealt in chemicals. "I used to travel a lot on the train, in 2nd AC and 3rd AC, for my work. And I would meet parents all the time who, the moment they heard I was from Kota, would start complaining about how greedy everyone is in Kota."
For the average amount of money a family was investing in Kota, Jain realized no one had thought of a business opportunity around making things smoother for them.


"In Jaipur, the business of Sitapur Stones is worth ₹300-400 crore rupees but there are dozens of professional companies which organize it. Kota's coaching business is worth ₹1,500-1,800 crore, but there was no one to organize it. So one day in 2008, I put myself to the task, starting with a survey of the condition in the hostels, from the number of geysers to the quality of food."
In 2008, he rented an office in the middle of the area hosting the largest number of students and put up a board announcing his "unique concept of service, for the first time in India".
"We promised to help kids focus on studies without any outside disturbance. I developed a computerised system where every student whose parent registered him or her with us, Local Guardian, got a 4-digit registration number. This is how it works: Someone has woken up at 10 am and needs to solve a set of calculus sums before a class that starts at 11 am. He realizes he is out of toothpaste. Now if he is to climb down four flights of steps to the street, walk to a grocery store, buy a toothpaste and go back four flights, he will waste at least 15-20 minutes, and will not be able to finish the assignment. If he is subscribed with us, though, all he has to do is SMS, 'LG NO 3750 need toothpaste.'"
Most students who come to Kota for IIT-JEE stay for at least two years and many claim to study six hours a day on an average, other than the six hours they spend over three classes of two-hour duration each. Sundays are mandated a compulsory off by the city administration, but the institutes are known to slip in an occasion test every once in a while. Whatever free time the students have left during the day, they spend it on escaping their reality. Some of them watch movies in multiplexes, others listen to songs on their phones, and almost all buy slots at the nearest cyber cafe to play video games they can pick from collections boasting every genre of the form.

Most students who come to Kota for IIT-JEE stay for at least two years and many claim to study six hours a day on an average, other than the six hours they spend over three classes of two-hour duration each.

Jain and his executives didn't just guarantee the maximizing of their wards' study time, they even had plans for minimizing that of the non-wards. "Once they meet their target for their day, whether it's polishing up on Newton's Law, or finishing the DPP sheet, we encouraged them to go to the next room and ask their friends to go to the mall or the movies with them. Because if everyone studies to the same extent, then the competition will just go up."

****

Almost everyone I meet in Kota has a strong view on why the children are killing themselves and how to stop the trend. Often this comes after they have tried to make a business deal with you. A hostel agent who took me to a corner inside Allen's campus and proposed a good rate for a hostel for my imaginary "ward" had, for example, the perfect solution to save him or her from depression.
"You have to make sure their mind is never diverted. At this hostel there is no chance of that. Bachche aaj kal ghoome-phirne mein apna time waste karte hain, groups bana ke 3-4 ghante movies dekhte hain. (The kids these days waste their time loitering around, or watching movies in groups of 3 or 4). We don't let any groups form. After 10 pm no child can leave the hostel, after 11 they can't go from one room to another, no friend however close can ever enter the building. If the kids follow this system, all they can do with their time is study. Agar proper schedule pe study karte rehenge toh depression kahe ko paida hoga (If they study according to proper schedule, why will they fall into depression)?"
Later, the manager of the said hostel elaborates: "We try in fact to see to it that the children who live with us do not make any friends, taaki ghoomne phirne mein, awara-gardi mein waqt zaya na ho (so that no time is wasted in wandering around). No laptops are allowed either. These are the things that put children on the wrong track... Hamari controlling aisi rahti hai ki bachcha depression mein aa hi nahin sakta (our control on them is so complete that there is no chance of them encountering depression)."
At some point during my three days in Kota, after an autorickshaw driver has offered me a special deal—600 rupees a month for carrying me back and forth between my hostel and coaching institute—and tut-tuted at me for not being of any use to him, he proceeds to tell me what the whole fuss is about: "I don't know how exactly to put it to you, but you can understand things that go on between these children at this age. Bas woh hi hai (that's it)"
And as I pause in the middle of a day running around Kota to buy an extra set of notebooks, the man at the second hand bookshop offers me the tersest take on the situation in Kota: "Bachche pagal hain (The kids are insane)."

****



On my last evening in Kota, taking a shared autorickshaw back to my hotel, I meet someone who shows no desire to talk to me. He's a student, I can tell, from the loaded bag of study material he's carrying around. I try Kota-speak.
"Which institute?"
"Resonance."
"11th?"
"No, 13th."
"PCM?"
"Yes."
"How many years in Kota?"
"Oh, I actually only took admission last week, and I am going back home day after."
Nitin Kumar is going to leave Kota within a week of his arrival because he is "frustrated." "Life is a struggle in Kota. Nothing is easy. Except the admission. The weather is too hot, the hostel mess gives us no breakfast, there is no time to have lunch, I can't understand anything in class, and I have no one to talk to."
So, on Kumar's fourth night in Kota, he phoned his parents in Muzaffarpur in Bihar and told them he can't do it. "I am not the kind of person who can keep lying to them, telling them on the phone every day that studies are going well, like most of the kids here."
Kumar doesn't see himself as an IIT-type guy. "I could do with a theoretical kind of education. Like geography. Or a B.Sc. In Maths. My parents had permitted me to do it, but family friends said 'no, send him to prepare for engineering'. Going back means I am wasting a lot of their money." He added: "They will feel sad, but they will not say anything. We are economically not that well-off—my father runs a general store back home--but they have always spent on my education, perhaps because they expect I will do something for them at the end."
But what is it that he wants to do, I asked him, now that he was in the mood to talk. "Never thought about that," he said, eyes to the floor, "I have never felt that free."

Snigdha Poonam Wins Bournemouth University Award For HuffPost Story On Kota Suicides - Huffington Post.In

The story chronicled the dark side of the IIT aspiration.

25/04/2017 8:34 PM IST | Updated 23 hours ago

                               SNIGDHA POONAM

Journalist Snigdha Poonam has received the 2017 Journalist of Change Award for her June 2016 HuffPost India story on the spate of suicides by students training for the IIT entrance examinations in Kota, Rajasthan.


Poonam, who is currently a National Affairs Writer at Hindustan Times in New Delhi, worked on the story last year as an independent journalist. She described the assignment as her "most heartbreaking reporting trip".

"I'm very happy for the recognition this story has received and I hope this helps shine greater light into the issues surrounding Kota, the IIT-prep industry and student suicides," she said.

She received the award from Krishna Prasad, former editor-in-chief of Outlook magazine and a member of the Press Council India. The award was adjudicated by a jury comprising Prasad and Rediff.com editor Nikhil Lakshman, apart from Bournemouth University academics Dr Samantha Leahy-Harland, Genna West, Dr Einar Thorsen and Dr C Sreedharan.

The award is offered by UK's Bournemouth University as part of its Connect India initiative.

"This is our way of encouraging journalism that makes a real difference, journalism that is not scared. Snigdha's reportage on the Kota suicides was impressive not only for the insights it provided, but also for the sensitive treatment of a typically stigmatised subject. At Bournemouth University, we have a vibrant community of scholars and practitioners, and I hope she will enjoy interacting with them and sharing her expertise," Dr Sreedharan, who heads up the Connect India initiative, said.

The finalists included Nikita Saxena and Priyanka Dubey, both of Caravan magazine, Rhythma Kaul of Hindustan Times, Shafaq Shah of Rising Kashmir, and Pallavi Rebbapragada of First Post.

The winner gets to spend up to a fortnight at Bournemouth University, participating in programmes and interacting with scholars and practitioners.


Monday, April 24, 2017

HRD Ministry to hold high-level probe into IIT-K students' death - DNA India


IIT Kharagpur

Sun, 23 Apr 2017-09:24pm , PTI

"The official assured me that a team headed by a director of the ministry will be appointed to probe the cases of alleged suicides happening in IIT-Kharagpur," he said here.

The HRD Ministry will hold a high- level probe into the recent incidents of death of students in the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

Congress MP KC Venugopal on Sunday said he has been informed by Additional Secretary R Subramaniam that a team, headed by a senior ministry official, would be appointed to look into the incidents and that the teachers from other IITs would be part of the team. The Lok sabha MP from Alappuzha in Kerala, Venugopal said it was conveyed to him by during his telephonic talks with the officer over the death of a Keralite student in IIT-K.

Nidhin, a fourth-year aerospace engineering student of IIT-K, was found hanging from the ceiling of his room on Friday. "The official assured me that a team headed by a director of the ministry will be appointed to probe the cases of alleged suicides happening in IIT-Kharagpur," he said here.

Venugopal said he has written to HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar, seeking his intervention on the matter.
Venugopal said he was informed that the ministry has received an internal investigation report prepared by the IIT-Kharagpur on Nidhin's death.

The MP said he demanded a high-level probe in view of other such incidents in the IIT. Nidhin was the third student to commit suicide this year.

The IIT campus reported the first suicide on January 16, when Lokesh Meena from Rajasthan jumped on the tracks and was hit by a train at Jakpur station.

The second took place on March 30 when the body of a youth from Andhra Pradesh, Sana Sree Raj, was found on the train tracks, barely 500 metres from the IIT campus.

Sunday, April 23, 2017

Nature therapy route to check IIT suicides - TNN


Somdatta Basu | TNN | Apr 23, 2017, 06.22 AM IST

KOLKATA: Suicide of Nidhin N, a fourth-year student of department of aerospace engineering of IIT-Kharagpur, at his Nehru Hall B Block ground floor room on Friday is not the only such incident at the institute. It was only in January that a third-year civil engineering student jumped in front of a train at Jakpur station near the campus. 

IIT-Kgp authorities are now initiating a number of measures focusing on nurturing a students' community connected with each other and the environment on the campus. 

To begin with, the semester students are gearing up to take a course on the science of happiness. As part of this course, students have already conducted "out of the box" projects with faculty and staff. 

Japanese program of "shinrin-yoku" or forest bathing (spending time in a forest) has also been adopted with a twist. It has been noticed that nature therapy heals depression. The counselling centre is working on a plan called "Life under the Canopy". Students will have to identify a list of 12 trees on the campus. Then they will have to take a picture with a friend under a tree and submit it. It's also part of the nature therapy. 

To promote happiness, IIT-Kharagpur had hosted Saamdu Chetri, the director of the Gross National Happiness Center of Bhutan, in April. Students, faculty and staff had a chance to listen to him impart some of the philosophy of the Bhutanese people. Happiness, the people in Bhutan feel, comes from spending time with each other and with nature. The country is known for its happiness quotient.

Top Comment
I am quite sure that Arvind Kejriwal has something to do with the application of this pseudo scientific method to check suicides in this institute of Higher Learning in India. For an institution set up on the Scientific Method, one would think that they would appoint counselors, therapists, and social workers to determine what is causing this spurt of suicides amongst students, and take remedial measures. Alas, instead of doing so, they are embarking on an untested, non-peer reviewed methodology to address this recent malaise that has overtaken their campus. One can only hope that they would not go the additional step and appoint witch doctors, soothsayers, faith healers, palmists and homeopaths, to actually treat those people who need real psychiatric attention! Arvind Kejriwal seems to have made his mark in his old alma mater!
andy jorgensen

"One of the important lessons in life to flourish is to be okay about getting help when you need it," said Sangeeta Das Bhattacharya, the professor in charge of the counselling centre. "It's a sign of strength. We are trying to promote help-seeking behavior, connectedness among students," she added. In some cases of extreme depression, parents of the students have been invited to stay on campus till the physicians give a clean chit to the students.




IIT-Kgp has a busy counselling centre and each year they witness about 3000 visits.





"Trees on the gorgeous campus of the institute date back to over a century. People can visit the centre or check the Facebook page for a list of twelve trees on campus," said a senior faculty member of the institute. 

"One of the important lessons in life to flourish is to be okay about getting help when you need it," said Sangeeta Das Bhattacharya, the professor in charge of the counselling centre. "It's a sign of strength. We are trying to promote help-seeking behavior, connectedness among students," she added. In some cases of extreme depression, parents of the students have been invited to stay on campus till the physicians give a clean chit to the students.




IIT-Kgp has a busy counselling centre and each year they witness about 3000 visits.

More News Reports on Nidhin IIT Kgps Students Suicide

The News Minute - ‎55 minutes ago‎
Twenty-two-year-old Nidhin, a student of aerospace engineering at the prestigious IIT- Kharagpur in West Bengal, did not attend his semester examination on Friday. Hours later, when the police broke open the door to his hostel room, Nidhin was seen ...


Indiatimes.com - ‎18 hours ago‎
A fourth-year aerospace engineering student at IIT-Kharagpur was found hanging from the ceiling of his room on Friday. Nidhin N. facebook/Nidhin N. "Let me sleep," was all that the suicide note, found in his room, said. While police sent Nidhin N's ...

New Kerala - ‎17 hours ago‎
Kharagpur (West Bengal) , Apr 22 : A fourth-year aerospace engineering student of IIT-Kharagpur, Nidhin, was found hanging from the ceiling of his ground floor room at Nehru Hall B Block on Saturday.

The Hindu - ‎20 hours ago‎
A fourth year student of IIT, Kharagpur was found hanging from the ceiling of his room, police said on Saturday. As Nidhin.N, a student of aerospace engineering, did not come out of his room in the morning on Friday, his friends informed the matter to ...

Daily News & Analysis - ‎21 hours ago‎
A fourth-year aerospace engineering student at IIT-Kharagpur (IIT-KGP) was found hanging inside his hostel room at the campus on Friday. According to the reports, 22-year-old Nidhin N was from Kerala. He used to set his alarm clock everyday for 2:00 am ...

India.com - ‎20 hours ago‎
The authorities were left shocked after finding Nidhin hanging from the ceiling of his ground floor room at the Nehru Hall. By Surabhi Shaurya | Updated: April 22, 2017 1:45 PM IST Follow Email. 0 Shares. Facebook share; Twitter share; Share on Google+ ...

onmanorama - ‎20 hours ago‎
Kharagpur: A fourth-year student of IIT-Kharagpur, who hailed from Kerala, was found hanging from the ceiling of his hostel room, the police said on Saturday. Nidhin N, 21, an aerospace engineering student, did not come out of his room on Friday morning.

Kaumudi Online - ‎15 hours ago‎
HARIPPAD: A Final semester Malayali student of West Bengal Kharagpur IIT aerospace engineering was found dead on Saturday. Alappuzha Harippad Chavady native Nithin (22) was found hanging from the fan in the college hostel room. The presumption is ...

Mathrubhumi English - ‎16 hours ago‎
Nitin Haripad: A fourth year aerospace engineering student at IIT-Kharagpur was found hanging from the ceiling fan of his hostel room on Friday night. 22-year-old Nithin N, a native of Haripad in Alappuzha, is the son of SBI Oachira bank manager Nasar ...

News Nation - ‎19 hours ago‎
Nidhin.N, a student of aerospace engineering, did not come out of his room in the morning Friday and his friends informed the matter to the authorities. By PTI | Updated On : April 22, 2017 01:49 PM. Fourth year student of IIT Kharagpur commits suicide ...

Times of India - ‎Apr 21, 2017‎
KOLKATA: A fourth-year aerospace engineering student at IIT-Kharagpur was found hanging from the ceiling of his ground-floor room at Nehru Hall B Block on Friday. "Let me sleep," was all that the suicide note, found in his room, said. While police sent ...

Blive - ‎16 hours ago‎
Haripad: A Malayalee student has been found hanging inside his hostel room at IIT- Kharagpur today. The deceased has been identified as Nithin. N, hailing from Haripad in Alappuzha district. Nithin, 21, was found hanging from the ceiling fan of his

indiablooms - ‎21 hours ago‎
Kolkata, Apr 22 (IBNS): A student of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur reportedly committed suicide in his hostel room inside the campus area in West Medinipur district of West Bengal on Friday, reports said. According to reports, Nidhin ...

TopYaps - ‎19 hours ago‎
Students and administration at IIT-Kharagpur were in for a shock on Friday after a student was found hanging in his hostel room in the campus. According to reports, Nidhin N, a 22-year-old from Kerala who was in his fourth year of aerospace engineering ...

FactsPress - ‎15 hours ago‎
IIT Kharagpur Student Commits Suicide: A fourth-year engineering student at IIT-Kharagpur was found hanging in his hostel room late on Friday night, the latest in a string of similar deaths at premier institutes that have been blamed on high stress and ...

ScoopWhoop - ‎19 hours ago‎
A fourth year student at IIT-Kharagpur was found hanging from the ceiling of his room at the campus on Friday. 22-year-old Nidhin N was pursuing aerospace engineering at the institute and hailed from Kerala. Fourth year student of Aerospace Engineering ...

Bihar Prabha - ‎21 hours ago‎
Kharagpur (West Bengal), Apr 22 (ANI): A 22-year-old engineering student allegedly committed suicide at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in West Bengal's Kharagpur on Friday night. The deceased, a student of aerospace engineering, was found ...

Times of India - ‎2 hours ago‎
ALAPPUZHA: A fourth-year IIT-Kharagpur student from Haripad near Alappuzha was found hanging in his hostel room on Friday. Recommended By Colombia. An aerospace engineering student, Nidhin N, 22, had skipped his exam on Thursday and left ...

Times of India - ‎3 hours ago‎

Kolkata: Suicide of Nidhin N, a fourth-year student of department of aerospace engineering of IIT-Kharagpur, at his Nehru Hall B Block ground floor room on Friday is not the only such incident at the institute. It was only in January that a third-year ...

What's Wrong With IIT-Kharagpur? Yet Another Student Commits Suicide This Month - India Times


INDIATIMES APRIL 22, 2017
18K SHARES


A fourth-year aerospace engineering student at IIT-Kharagpur was found hanging from the ceiling of his room on Friday.

FACEBOOK/NIDHIN N

"Let me sleep," was all that the suicide note, found in his room, said. While police sent Nidhin N's body for post-mortem, the institute authorities declined to comment.
This is the third IIT-Kharagpur student to end his life on the campus this year, second within a month.
The police said Nidhin (22), who had come from Kerala, would set his alarm clock at 2 am every night to wake up and study. Early on Friday, when the alarm did not stop ringing, the other students in the hostel suspected something was amiss.

FACEBOOK/NIDHIN N

They went up to his room, but the door was shut from inside and Nidhin reportedly did not respond. When he did not appear even on Friday, the hostel authorities were alerted.
Some of the students broke Nidhin's room's window panes to find him hanging from the ceiling. Cops at the nearby Hijli outpost was called; the OC and the additional SP of Kharagpur reached the IIT campus, broke open the door to recover Nidhin's body.

                                             ANI

West Midnapore SP Bharati Ghosh said a probe was on and that the police were examining the suicide note. The IIT campus saw the first suicide this year on January 16, when Lokesh Meena from Rajasthan jumped on the tracks and was hit by a train at Jakpur station.
The second death took place on March 30, when a youth from Andhra Pradesh, Sana Sree Raj, was found also on the train tracks, barely 500m from the IIT campus. Though the family claimed it was a murder, police called it a suicide.

‘Let me sleep’: Final words of Kerala student at IIT-Kharagpur before he hanged to death - The News Minute

Death
22-year-old Nidhin was a student of aerospace engineering.

Twenty-two-year-old Nidhin, a student of aerospace engineering at the prestigious IIT- Kharagpur in West Bengal, did not attend his semester examination on Friday. Hours later, when the police broke open the door to his hostel room, Nidhin was seen hanging from the ceiling fan. They found a note that read- "Let me sleep."

Nidhin, a fourth-year student hailing from Haripad in Kerala's Alappuzha district, was found hanging in his hostel room in the Nehru Hall of Residence on Friday evening, reports Aishik Chanda for The New Indian Express

His friends told this newspaper that Nidhin, who was one of the most studious students in the batch, had been depressed over the past few months. After Nidhin failed to attend the exam on Friday, his friends grew suspicious. When they got to his hostel room, the door was found to be locked from the inside and Nidhin did not respond to repeated calls. When the hostel authorities broke the window panes to his room after being informed by the other students, they found Nidhin hanging from the ceiling fan. 

After the police arrived, they entered the room and recovered a one-line suicide note. According to reports, the suicide note did not mention the reason for taking his own life. 

According to media reports, Nidhin is the son of Nazar, a bank manager and Nadiya, an employee at the land acquisition department of the Railways. His sister is a student at ISRO in Thiruvananthapuram. 

Nidhin's suicide is the second such case reported from IIT-Kharagpur in the past 20 days, the TNIE report states. On April 1, a student of electrical engineering from Andhra Pradesh was found dead at a railway track near the campus. 

Earlier in March, a student of IIT-Delhi had jumped off the fourth floor of his hostel room and the police had then said that the student was in depression and unable to bear the pressure.