Every student who committed suicide at such renowned institutes as the IITs dealt with severe pressures of various kinds, which are interlinked. Not getting a proper recruitment, examination stress, depression are some of the major factors.
CJ: Archana Mishra Fri, Jan 09, 2009 16:11:00 IST
November 29, 2004: Swapnil Chandrakant Dhasraskar, second year mechanical at IIT Kanpur
November 10, 2005: Lokesh Chand, third year ECE, IIT Rourkee.
November 17, 2005: Vijay Nakula, fourth year CSE, IIT Powai.
October 9, 2006: Anjan Kumar, second year, Chemical, IIT Kanpur.
November 6, 2006: Abhilash JJ, a PhD scholar from Kerala, pursuing doctoral studies at IIT Kanpur.
April 19, 2008: Prashant Kumar, first year student of electrical engineering, IIT Kanpur.
January 3, 2009: G. Suman, second year M.Tech student, IIT Kanpur.
YOU MIGHT be guessing what are these details for? One thing which grabs the eyeballs in the first glance is Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). These are not the names of the students who have done amazing work in their fields at young age, but names of those who committed suicides. Yes, these suicides are becoming common incidences at IIT.
IIT Kanpur tops the ranking in the number of suicides every year.
The year 2009 began with a fresh suicidal case of G Suman who allegedly killed himself by hanging. Upset over not getting a job through campus recruitment, Suman, a postgraduate IIT student took such a decision. Before him it was Prashant Kumar, first year student who also hanged himself in the room, apparently stressed over his exams. Abhilash JJ allegedly committed suicide consuming some cyanide and wrote a suicide note, which said he was under depression.
Every student who committed suicide at such a renowned institute dealt with severe pressures of various kinds, which are interlinked. Not getting a proper recruitment, examination stress, depression are some of the major factors. So, who should be blamed for these suicides, improper educational system, terrible stress on students in such reputed colleges or we as students who desire for higher studies in such institutes and with high expectation.
Every parent wants their child to be a topper in their class and expecting further, their child should get admission in IIT. When one enters the IIT, there is not only expectation from the parents that the student need to perform better but the student himself who has a higher self expectation being a part of the IIT.
However, to study at IIT is not everyone’s cup of tea. The study material in any of the courses is not only tough but it’s hectic for the students as well. Besides these in every semester two exams are conducted consecutively in a day, which builds a huge pressure on the students’ mind. For a major lot, even the professors seems to uncooperative, as they always try to build pressure on them in some way or the other.
The stress to maintain the reputation of being an IITian, dejected and ashamed because not many students flunk that often and the mounting stress to better and to have a good GPI or CPI is killing (pun intended).
Last but not the least the campus recruitment creates depression for students that make them emotionally weak and force them to end their lives.
Human nature is such that high self expectation creates within us an ego centric attitude, which in a state of depression fills our mind with negative thoughts and provokes for such a cowardly act of committing suicide.
An article that I read stated that suicides are because of an individual intrinsic character. It is also called copy cat suicide. In Wikipidea it has been stated, “The well known suicides serve as a model, in the absence of protective factors for the next suicide. This is referred as ‘suicide contagion’. These occasionally spread through school system, through community or in terms of celebrity suicide wave.”
With the rising suicidal rates, it can be said that today EQ (emotional quotient) is perhaps more important than IQ (intelligence quotient).
