2,400 students dropped out of IITs in 2 years, nearly half were SC, ST, OBC - the Print

2,400 students dropped out of IITs in 2 years, nearly half were SC, ST, OBC

Most of the dropouts occurred in the older IITs — Delhi tops the list, followed by Kharagpur, Bombay, Kanpur and Madras.
KRITIKA SHARMA Updated: 29 July, 2019 9:32 am IST

IIT Delhi | Wikipedia Commons

New Delhi: Over 2,400 students have dropped out from the 23 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in the last two years, with over half of them belonging to the general category. These dropouts are both at the undergraduate and postgraduate level.

According to data shared by the Ministry of Human Resource Development in Parliament last week, as many as 2,461 students dropped out of various IITs across the country, of whom 1,290 belong to the general category. The remaining 1,171 students are from the SC, ST and OBC categories.

Most of the dropouts have occurred in the older IITs — Delhi tops the list with 782 dropouts, followed by 622 in Kharagpur, 263 in Bombay, 190 in Kanpur and 128 in Madras.

The institutes on an average admit 9,000 students annually in undergraduate and 8,000 students in postgraduate courses.

While experts blame pressure, caste discrimination and postgraduate students taking up jobs as the reasons, the ministry told Parliament that it has taken the dropouts seriously and advised the institutions to take various corrective measures to improve the situation.

According to the ministry, the institutes have appointed advisers to monitor the academic progress of students, created a provision of additional classes for academically weaker students and provided counselling on family and personal issues.

The attrition rate, however, has shocked some IIT faculty members.

“I am shocked to see the huge dropout number but as far as I can understand the data, it is because of the M.Tech students who drop out after getting a job in a PSU where hiring typically happens in July,” said professor Dheeraj Sanghi who taught at IIT Kanpur.

“We have even requested the government to push the PSUs to hire in June so that we don’t have to deal with empty classrooms. On some occasions, we have even faced 60 students dropping out from an M.Tech batch of 80 and then we are forced to run the programme with just 20 students.”

IIT Delhi director V. Ramagopal Rao echoed his views but added that at the undergraduate level, most student quit as they can’t cope with the pressure of the curriculum.

“Attrition rates are higher at the M.Tech level because students leave for PSU jobs. Even the ministry is aware about PSUs hiring students after their course begins and we have taken it up with the PSUs but they don’t seem to come on board,” Rao told ThePrint.

“At the B.Tech level, students who drop out are mostly the ones who are not able to cope with the study pressure, many come from Hindi medium as well and have difficulties adjusting.”

Another faculty member at IIT Delhi, who wished to remain anonymous, said that most of the students who drop out at the undergraduate level are from the reserved category who are unable to keep up with the demands of the course.

Also read: IITs get new brief from Modi govt — work on indigenous defence technology

‘Caste-discrimination another reason’

Although more general category students have dropped out, the number of reserved students dropping out is higher in terms of proportion. Activists blame this on caste being a factor at these premier institutions, especially in the older IITs.

“The caste-based oppression in IITs is not direct but systematic,” Anoop Kumar, a documentary filmmaker, told ThePrint. “Most of the students who come to IITs under the reserved category are from non-English medium backgrounds and institutions do not make sure that the transition happens. There is no dearth of merit with these students but there is a problem with the language because of which students have to face difficulties.”

Kumar’s documentary, ‘Death of Merit’, is a three-part series with testimonies of families of students who committed suicide allegedly due to caste discrimination at these institutes.

Harvard scholar and Dalit rights activist Suraj Yengde, who has authored the book Caste Matters, also agrees with Kumar on caste-based discrimination in IITs.

“These institutes do not cater to the needs of people from reserved categories because they are occupied by people at the administration level and at faculty by people from the higher castes,” he said. “These Brahmanical professors are not used to socialising with marginalised people and when they have to, it becomes problematic.”

Naveen Kumar, an alumnus of IIT Delhi who has now formed a political party — Bahujan Azad Party — to work for reserved category students, also echoed their views.

“When I was a student, someone had written — ‘SCs, STs, not allowed here’ outside a person’s hostel room,” he said. “He went to complain to the dean but his complaint was not taken very seriously. I remember another incident where a professor rejected a girl from taking his course just on the basis of her name as she belonged to the reserved category.”

An IIT professor who has managed the IIT-JEE admissions and has been teaching at one of the institutes since 2003, however, disagreed.

“More than 2,400 students dropping out of IITs is a huge and unbelievable number, given the number of applications that we get each year,” he said. “But what is more unbelievable that there could be a caste angle to the dropouts. I do not feel that there is any kind of caste discrimination in IITs.”

The professor, though, said that reserved category students generally find it difficult to cope up with the pressure of studies once they enter the IIT system. “When students from reserved category get admission in IITs, the merit is lowered for them and sometimes we are even asked to take students who have not made the cut,” he added. “But once they enter the system, they have to face the real pressure and many are then not able to cope with it.”

Also read: The IITs have a long history of systematically othering Dalit students

3 Of Family Found Dead On IIT Campus In Delhi, Police Suspect Suicide

3 Of Family Found Dead On IIT Campus In Delhi, Police Suspect Suicide

தமிழில் படிக்க

Gulshan Das, wife Sunita and his mother Kamta were found hanging from the ceiling fans in three rooms of the flat, said a police officer.

Delhi | Edited by Arun Nair | Updated: July 27, 2019 08:26 IST

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Gulshan Das, his wife and mother were found hanging inside their flat in IIT-Delhi campus.

NEW DELHI: 

A lab technician living inside the premises of Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi allegedly committed suicide along with his wife and mother on Friday.

Police reached the IIT-Delhi campus after receiving information that the family was not able to contact Gulshan Das, lab technician, who was living with his wife and mother. 

Gulshan Das, wife Sunita and his mother Kamta were found hanging from the ceiling fans in three rooms of the flat, said a police officer.

No suicide note has been recovered from the site. Police have sent the bodies for post-mortem.

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During the preliminary investigation, it has been revealed that the Gulshan and Sunita married in February this year. Gulshan's family, based in Haryana, has been informed of the developments.

Opinion | What do you do about this 'IIT dream' madness of parents? - Sadipan Deb

Opinion | What do you do about this 'IIT dream' madness of parents?

Updated: 26 Jul 2019, 03:51 PM IST

Sandipan Deb

This craze is a systemic and social problem and we need to address it for the sake of our children


Topics
IIT DreamEducation System

A piece I wrote last week in this paper on the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) craze among the Indian middle class has provoked intense discussion on social media. In brief, I had argued that over the last 25 years, millions of parents, under the delusion that a seat in an IIT is a ticket to paradise on earth, have disregarded their children’s real talents and interests, robbed them of a normal childhood and adolescence, forced them to go through the years-long grind of coaching classes and, at the end of it (even if they do get into an IIT—a 1% probability), left many of them psychologically damaged, possibly permanently. And that, despite the hype, an IIT degree by itself hardly guarantees you a hotshot career.

Among those who responded to my piece, those unaware of the trend expressed shock. A couple of them proposed that the article be translated in vernacular languages (an IITian has, in fact, already sent me a Hindi translation) so that it can reach many more parents.

A former deputy chief of army staff suggested that the article should be recirculated every week. Nearly everyone who was, or is, part of the IIT system thought that what I had written was correct.


What are the solutions? A very senior educationist asked why we couldn’t have 50 IITs instead of the current 23 — wouldn’t that ease the problem a lot? But in recent years, even the top IITs have been finding it hard to hire quality faculty. So, that’s easier said than done. Besides, a BITS Pilani or a Delhi Technology University could be providing better education than the newbie IITs, and recruiters know this. Parents need to inform themselves, and not stay mesmerised by the IIT brand.

But there is no way parents can realize their folly in coercing their children to study engineering, unless large numbers of children themselves rebel.

Till perhaps the mid-1990s, engineering and medicine were seen by the middle class as the only careers that could “guarantee" their children a good life. Today, there are many more professions that pay very well for talent and merit. These parents must be shaken awake.


Studies like a recent one done in IIT-Kharagpur on students’ mental health issues must be widely publicized. The survey found that 84% BTech students felt that mental health was a real problem on the campus, 72% had experienced anxiety or depression and, among them, 24% had thought of suicide. Several respondent statements are cries for help: That society must make parents aware that they “should not force their dreams onto their children and give them the freedom to make mistakes and fail from time to time".

Others speak of severe stress about living up to parents’ career aspirations post-IIT, and their inability to pursue their own passions.

On to the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) itself and the coaching class system that feeds off it. The coaching industry must be hit mercilessly. In 2011, the government suggested giving weightage to the candidates’ Class XII board marks for IIT admission. This made poor sense, and was dropped. One good idea is that, in addition to physics, chemistry and math, the JEE should test for IQ and general problem-solving skills, which the coaching classes’ rote learning methods will be unable to teach (or take some years to catch up). This is easy to implement, and should be considered.


What IIT-Bombay professor Kannan Moudgalya, himself an IITian, suggests is far more radical. He proposes that Class XII students sit for the JEE Main (the JEE first stage), which is kept comparatively simple, and offers admission to 100-200 select engineering colleges, with, say, 50,000 seats.

They sit for the JEE Advanced at the end of their second year and, those selected, go to IITs to complete years III and IV, and get their BTech degrees (maybe joint degrees with their colleges).

The JEE Advanced tests engineering aptitude, so only bright and motivated students will get through. In their first two years in college, desirous students can be mentored by IITs free of cost. Teachers, too, can be guided and the colleges can aim for higher accreditation.

This will reduce pressure on school students, and give them more free time to play or pursue other interests, while IIT science professors, with lower work load, can work with school students interested in science research.

This innovative idea kills many birds with one stone, but requires a complete rethinking of the IIT system, as we have known it, for the last 68 years.

We have a huge problem on our hands with the IITs, one of the finest achievements of post-Independence India, a problem affecting a large swath of society.

We need to bell that cat and find some solutions, quickly. And, bureaucrats can’t do that.

The IITs are a unique system, and only direct stakeholders understand it fully—perhaps most of all, the alumni. No one knows the system and cares for it more than they do.

Sandipan Deb is former editor of ‘Financial Express’ and founder -editor of ‘Open’ and ‘Swarajya’ magazines and an IIT alumnus
Topics

IIT DreamEducation System

To stop ragging-related suicides, Modi govt to make 1-week induction mandatory in colleges - The Print

To stop ragging-related suicides, Modi govt to make 1-week induction mandatory in colleges 

Govt hopes the induction programme will not only help freshers get accustomed to a college campus but also help them interact with seniors.
KRITIKA SHARMA Updated: 26 July, 2019 8:47 am IST

University students (representational image) | Bloomberg

New Delhi: The Modi government has decided to include a mandatory one-week induction programme for all students in higher education institutions, in a bid to curb ragging-related suicide cases on campus.

The government hopes that the induction programme will not only help freshers get accustomed to the college campus but also help them interact with their seniors. The decision is a result of the concern in the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry at ragging-related suicides in colleges.


According to data with the University Grants Commission (UGC), between 2012 and July 2019, 54 ragging-related suicide incidents have occurred across the country.

“In the initial days, students are exposed to ragging incidents,” a senior HRD ministry official said. “If we have an induction programme where they are made familiar to each other and their seniors before the academic session begins, they will be able to establish a rapport in the college and there is no question of ragging.”

An official in HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank’s office told ThePrint that he is “very serious” about not tolerating ragging in educational institutions.

“He has clearly communicated to all educational institutions to have a zero-tolerance policy towards ragging and having an induction programme before the academic session is one of the ways he wants to prevent ragging,” he said.

Also read: Allahabad University, with 3 former PMs as alumni, ends student union polls

Induction will help students get accustomed to campus

The HRD ministry also hopes that the induction will help students familiarise themselves with the institution, its surroundings, library, activities and various societies during the one-week programme.

“We have to understand that a student who comes to college is experiencing a new environment and may find difficulties in adjusting,” the senior ministry official quoted above said. “That’s why we want all higher education institutions to have a mandatory one-week induction programme for students, during which period they should be accustomed to the institution.”

So far, only the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have induction programmes as they had been reporting suicides on campus owing to huge pressure.

India's Colleges, Universities Need to Mind Students' Mental Wellbeing Too - The Wire

India's Colleges, Universities Need to Mind Students' Mental Wellbeing Too

"Asking what mental health services universities need or why young people seem to have poor mental health is the wrong question. We need to ask why students are in distress."

India's college and university campuses are hotbeds of mental distress, some of it leading to suicide. Photo: PTI

Anoo Bhuyan

EDUCATION

HEALTH

4 HOURS AGO

Two years into her PhD in 2016, Siva Shakthi began throwing things around her room at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Thiruvananthapuram. Her friends got worried and took her to see a doctor. She was soon diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

“In that episode, I was experiencing mania. With bipolar disorder, one can experience either extreme depression or extreme mania,” Shakthi, who will be wrapping up her PhD at IISER in a few months, said. She has already published 11 research papers.

She had to take time off to go to Puducherry for treatment and stay with her family there. When she got back to IISER a few months later, she said she started regularly seeing both the psychiatrist and psychologist on campus.

The university did not compromise on these doctors and, Shakthi said, she found them very qualified and professional in their work. “They really maintained confidentiality. The medications which my psychiatrist at IISER gave were acceptable to my other expert doctors at NIMHANS and JIPMER, who were also treating me. I felt confident about the doctors provided on campus.”

She also credits her guide, at the IISER’s school of physics, Ravi Pant. “He is really ambitious but also was flexible with my work on days I was unwell,” she said. “If not for that, I would have dropped out of my PhD.”

When Rohit Vemula, a PhD student at the Hyderabad Central University and a Dalit, took his life in 2016, one newspaper columnist asked whether this was a case of “depression or oppression”. But this binary is often meaningless, as many argued: depression can be a result of oppression.

Indeed, suicide is not the only marker of poor mental health, though it has come to dominate the narrative. With or without suicide, Indian students are spiralling in and out of their mental health conditions while simultaneously pushing through their coursework.

Also read: The Political ‘Environment’ of India’s Mental Health

Why students are in distress

While Shakthi has had a positive experience dealing with her mental health from within a high-pressure academic environment, this hasn’t been the norm.

Vemula died by suicide days after the university suspended him and his friends and barred them from the hostel. More recently, Payal Tadvi, a gynaecologist and an adivasi, died by suicide in Maharashtra after letting people know she’d been the victim of caste-based harassment at the hands of her “upper-caste” seniors.

In the last three months, two students at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, have been found dead, possibly by suicide. Two medical students in Rajasthan have died by suicide in just one week.


Revathe Thillaikumar@Revathe92



This is horrible. It's two deaths within 3 months. And we still aren't talking about mental health as much as we should be. We barely have a proper support system and there is indifference from every level. It's not just students' fight. It shouldn't be. https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/doctoral-student-found-dead-in-iisc/article28593123.ece …


Doctoral student found dead in IISc.

He had joined the institute in 2014thehindu.com
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9:26 AM - Jul 20, 2019
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Until recently, ragging was assumed to be a normal part of student life, in spite of the existence of anti-ragging laws and university policies. This is apart from targeted harassment along caste, class, gender and sexuality lines. Many students attend college under various socio-economic pressures, including from their families; so in addition to their implicit harm, ragging and harassment also exacerbate mental stress.

Thus, all together, India’s college and university campuses are hotbeds of mental distress, some of it leading to suicide. Whether universities like it or not, they now have a responsibility to ensure students have access to mental healthcare services. Officials are also expected to structure campus administration, teaching and coursework keeping in mind the mental wellbeing of their student population.

“Asking what mental health services universities need or why young people seem to have poor mental health is the wrong question,” Soumitra Pathare, a psychiatrist at the Centre for Mental Health Law and Policy, Pune, told The Wire. “We need to ask why students are in distress.”

Pathare – who works closely with the government to formulate law and policy – particularly disagrees with the depression/oppression binary. “Taking a medical approach to the issue and terming it a ‘mental health issue’ makes it seem like it’s the fault of the person with the ‘poor health’ and that the solutions are also their responsibility and that the solutions can be simple and biomedical,” rebutted. “This increases stigma and makes medical care dominant.”

According to him, there are lots of determinants of poor mental health and that mental illness is an outcome of a variety of these determinants.

“The medical and counselling approach tells students, ‘You have to solve yourself, the system is not wrong’. But we need to ask how we can reorganise the system to decrease distress, and not pin it on the individual alone.”

To this end, he contends that asking broader and more generic questions on the nature of distress could lead to a fuller understanding of what kind of solutions we could use instead of focusing on just “mental health”. In the same vein, he says we need a preventative, and not curative, approach that also thinks in terms of universal, selective and targeted solutions at once.

A universal approach would mean making systemic changes, overhauling the rigid structures that contribute to oppressing students (many of whom may already be marginalised). For example, in 2003, the Tamil Nadu government introduced supplementary examinations for students who had failed their public exams, and has since claimed the measure decreased the incidence of suicide by 50%.

A selective approach would mean changing policies that affect students already from high-risk communities or who are already marginalised.

Finally, a targeted approach entails making services available to people who may already have a known problem, such as a diagnosed medical and mental-health condition.

Prateek Sharma, a student of clinical psychology and who writes on mental health issues, says approaches should target the individual, administrative and political levels. For example, at the individual level, “a psychologist must be like an investigator to find out the actual causes of distress: Is a student anxious just about the upcoming exams or maybe they don’t want to be studying that subject at all?”

At the institutional level, faculty and administration must think beyond yearly workshops and posters. “Are they trained to recognise early signs of anxiety or depression or do they dismiss students by telling them that they should just do yoga or try to relax?”

And at the political level, Sharma says it is not a coincidence that most suicides are reported from medical and engineering institutes. Aqseer Sodhi, a psychotherapist who runs Aaina, a peer-support initiative out of New Delhi, agrees. “Competitive residential colleges tend to be hyper-masculine, toxic spaces where empathy goes to die,” she told The Wire. “To address ragging, bullying, sexual harassment, depression and anxiety would mean working on campus culture and addressing complaints/incidents as they arise” (emphasis in the original).


Vishu Guttal@vishuguttal



How good is the mental health support system and how is it designed in various research institutes like IITs, IISERs, etc in India? If you can put me in touch people there who know this - that would be great. Thanks!
57
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Towards ‘acceptable’ ways forward

Pathare adds that there are clearly some determinants in the design of these institutes precipitating poor mental health. He also links the spate of complaints to wider superstructures, such as the economy outside the university, the employment crisis, the pressure to marry and start a family, etc.

So whatever intervention an institute tries needs to be “acceptable” to students: “Young people may not be interested to go to a room with a big signboard that says ‘counsellor.’ Peer counselling may be a smarter approach to try.”

Sodhi has been working on a peer-support model with a flat, non-hierarchical format in various colleges. “Most universities stop at hiring a campus counsellor that nobody is comfortable going to because the counsellors are ultimately answerable to the administration,” she said.

Aaina, the initiative Sodhi runs, has adapted a manual on peer-support training from the Trinity College, Dublin. Students are invited to apply for a two-day training workshop, with the organisers preferring those that other students in distress have reached out to. The workshop helps the selected candidates conduct “listening circles” that can identify different stages of mental illness among their peers.

“We don’t try to convert everyone on campus,” Sodhi says. “We empower the ones that already serve as agony aunts to their friends. We help them listen better, we create a space so they can unburden too, and we keep tabs on them so they don’t burnout listening to their peers.”

Some institutes, like IIT Delhi, have started outsourcing these services or have teamed up with companies like YourDost. Additionally, Aaina and others like it have been taking the peer-support model to the the Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat; the Institute of Law Nirma University, Ahmedabad; and the National Law School, Bengaluru, among others.

At IISER Pune, counsellors as well as faculty members have been assigned to every student to discuss academic as well as non-academic issues. IIT Kanpur offers a layered counselling servicethat is open 24/7 during exams. IIT Guwhati has a ‘Saathi club’ for counselling. Ashoka University, in Sonipat, has a centre for wellbeing with student counsellors trained by their psychologists.

Places like the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, the Ambedkar University, Delhi, and Manipal University have set up counselling cells. Some departments at IISc also have small committees in charge of general wellbeing at the workplace.

Super failure: Horrors of IIT dream by Sandeepan Deb - Live Mint

There is a dire need to train students in communication and other soft skills. The absence of these is the key reason why many IITians leave the campus, unemployed. Sanjeev Verma/HT

Super failure: Horrors of IIT dream

9 min read . Updated: 23 Jul 2019, 11:02 PM IST 

Sandipan Deb

There is something deeply wrong in the IIT ecosystem, which should worry us as a society
What the media doesn’t report is that the median salary of a fresh IIT graduate is ₹8-10 lakh a year, and that even in the top IITs, 15-20% don’t get jobs on campus

Super 30, the Hrithik Roshan-starrer movie based on the life of Anand Kumar, who runs an IIT entrance coaching centre in Patna, is a hit. I haven’t watched this hagiography, but the release of the film is an occasion to talk about a deep malaise that has been affecting millions of families over the past two decades and more. This is the widespread insane belief among the Indian middle class that getting into an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is a ticket to paradise on earth.

When we entered IIT in the 1980s, we studied for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for a year at most, and some super-bright kids, not at all. Many rejected an IIT seat to study pure science because that was their first love, or went to a lesser-known engineering college if they did not get a stream of their choice in an IIT.

Not so today. Nowadays, parental pressure to get into IIT starts building on the child when he (I’ll refer to the IITian as a “he", since the boy-girl ratio in the IITs is 10:1; in our time, it was 25:1) is in Class VII, maybe even earlier. These parents don’t give a damn about what the child’s real talents or interests are. This madness is typified by a query posted by an Indian parent on Quora, the public question-answer portal, in 2017: “Which coaching institute is best for my kid in 5th standard for IIT JEE preparation?"

The parent was trolled. Many rational voices suggested that he should allow his child to follow his dreams and not pressure him. The parent replied: “He is a kid and doesn’t know what is good or bad. So parents decide what is better. IIT tag is very prestigious and it will bring pride to our family." A few days ago, I mentioned this to an IIT professor. He said this sort of utterly selfish IIT-obsessed parenthood with venal disregard for the child’s well-being is common.

Before I get into the tragic details, though, I should clarify that IITs continue to produce thousands of fine young graduates. Some millennial IITians are the brightest tech minds I have ever met (and many of my friends agree). As students, they had kept track of cutting-edge research around the world, been in touch with leading scientists, and taken full advantage of the matchless facilities that the IITs offer. These men and women are some of the finest ever products of the IIT system. Yet, there is something deeply wrong out there that should worry us as a society.

The money game

The man on Quora is going to rob his son of his childhood joy, his adolescent tomfoolery, and cause him psychological damage that will possibly last a lifetime, even if he gets into an IIT. Imagine the sense of failure the son will carry all his life if he doesn’t get in. All this, because his parents read media reports every year that half a dozen IITians have been hired by Amazon/Facebook/whatever at $200,000 a year, with US postings. They instantly multiply the figure by the $- ₹exchange rate, and go goggle-eyed, without considering purchasing power parity, or that the $200,000 includes elements that may be performance-based or could be paid out over several years. Then, there is Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Google. Every such parent sees a Sundar in their little Sonu.

What the media does not report is that the median salary of a fresh IIT graduate is around ₹8-10 lakh a year, and that even in the top IITs, at least 15-20% students do not get jobs on campus. The IIT Bombay website tells us that for the academic year 2017-18, 85.21% of B.Tech students who participated in the campus placement process got jobs. The figure for IIT Madras was only 73.96%. I’ll come to the reasons for these shocking numbers later.

If he is lucky, “Sonu" goes to a JEE coaching class for only two years. The moment he joins, he is told that if he does not make it to the top 500 in the all-India rankings, he is a loser (the IIT intake is about 12,000, out of the more than one million children who sit for the JEE every year). So, right from the beginning, whether it’s from the parents or the coaching class, the child knows that there’s a 99.99% chance that he’s going to be a failure. The coaching class applies this horrendous pressure because the more high-rankers it produces, the better it is for its business.

The classes teach Sonu how to crack the multiple-choice-format JEE. “More than teaching you to work out the right answer, they teach you to reduce your chances of pressing the button on a wrong answer, since it’s nearly impossible to answer all the questions in the allotted time, and incorrect answers carry negative marks. They do not impart knowledge; they train you to crack one specific exam. So, effectively, the child learns little," says an IIT professor.

During an induction programme for freshmen in his IIT, when the professor asked a group of 90 students how many were happy with the streams and IITs they had got, only a few raised their hands. “They had entered IIT, and they already felt they were losers!" he says. “So I told them that Sundar Pichai, too, did not get the stream or IIT he wanted." (Pichai studied metallurgical engineering in IIT Kharagpur.)

Absence of learning

Over the last two decades, I have visited several IITs, and met possibly a hundred students. It is astonishing how few of them are interested in learning engineering, and how many of them are unhappy on campus. Now, it is an undeniable truth that since the first IITs were set up in the 1950s, middle-class children have been going to these institutes, not necessarily because they were passionate about engineering, but because the IITs seemed to be a passport to a better life than their parents.

But till about 25 years ago (which roughly coincides with the explosion of the Indian information technology industry), getting into IIT was not a life-or-death question, and those who got in, studied (or did not), thoroughly enjoyed their campus life, and stepped out as normal adults. Speak to any IITian who graduated in the last century, and he or she will definitely say that those were some of the best years of their lives. This is not true anymore.

Once in IIT, not only is Sonu under greater pressure to fulfil his parents’ Sundar Pichai dreams, the competition is also far more intense. “There are the guys who have it all mapped out from Day 1. They have this formula: to crack Amazon or Google, you need to have a CGPA (cumulative grade point average) above 7.5, be on some students’ committee, and do some volunteering. These are the ‘insiders’. But obviously they are taking on enormous pressure, because you have to study really hard, plus there are only so many student committee posts available," says a successful entrepreneur (class of 2011).

The entrepreneur goes on to add: “Then there are the ‘outsiders’, who want to be ‘insiders’, so they are stressed out too. And some people want to do other things in life, and just don’t fit in. They are seen by the rest as losers. So they’re miserable also. If you’re found reading a novel, people think you’re a freak. But—and I’m not joking—in their final year, guys who want to get into Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), who haven’t read a book in their lives, mug up four (P.G.) Wodehouse novels, because they know that a standard question in IIM interviews is: ‘Who’s your favourite author?’"

Too much academic pressure

In strict empirical terms, the academic pressure on an IIT student has not increased over the years. But earlier, students did not suffer massive years-long parental pressure (which also implies a closeted upbringing) and carry an overwhelming terror of failure. So they bore the stress of IIT life far more easily than many of today’s students. “And once these guys stumble," says a professor, “many of them don’t have it in them to get up. They have been strictly guided and spoon-fed all the way. They go into a downward spiral".

“There were several suicides in my time," says an investment banker who graduated in 2013, “and dozens of suicide attempts. Our coping mechanism was to totally desensitize ourselves. One of our close friends tried to kill himself—hung himself from a fan—but neither did his neck break nor did he strangulate. We rescued him. Later, we were having chai, and we were discussing: ‘The bugger is in mechanical engineering, and he couldn’t figure out the tensile strength of the rope! Couldn’t even bloody hang himself properly!’ In hindsight, of course, it was horrible. But that was how we could deal with what was happening."

About a decade ago, one IIT student took the extreme step of removing ceiling fans from all hostel rooms. Thankfully, better sense soon prevailed, and the institutes have taken wiser measures to handle the students’ depression issues. Most IITs today have counselling centres where students can seek professional help. However, the counsellors, to be truly useful, need to be particularly perceptive. Quick fixes for pre-exam anxiety are hardly solutions.

Much more effective have been student initiatives, where a senior student becomes the “mentor" for a group of juniors in his hostel. The junior is able to speak far more freely to his senior, who understands the issues much better, and can provide practical advice. He is also available close by 24X7. A hostel-mate of mine suggests another potentially powerful idea: micro-courses in yoga, meditation, mindfulness, Reiki and so on. These cannot be credit-bearing courses, because then, the typical IITian hunger for high grades will kick in, ensuring zero positive outcomes. IITs could certainly try this out.

There is also a dire need to train students in communication and other soft skills. The absence of these skills is a key reason why many IITians leave the campus, unemployed. Companies complain that they cannot meet their recruitment targets because many candidates are woefully inarticulate or lack the basic qualities needed to work in a team. This is how the loss of a normal adolescence plays out. But in earlier times, IITians also developed these skills through constant peer interaction and sports or cultural activities. Nandan Nilekani once told me: “I learnt all my people and management skills in IIT Bombay." Today, with internet in every room, there’s much less peer contact.

The good news is that the IITs are aware of the problem, and are working at it. But the elephant in the room is the parents—people who want to achieve their own failed aspirations through their children, stunting their growth and damaging them perhaps irreparably to satisfy their own greed and twisted notions of “prestige". Here is a fact straight out of Ripley’s: IIT professors—even directors—start getting calls from parents within a week of their children enrolling, asking what compensation packages they can expect at the end of their course. “The ones who need counselling are not the students, but the parents," says a professor. “You can turn off the tap, but the leakage is in the pipe."

I began this piece with the parent’s question on Quora. This is perhaps the answer he deserves (here, I’m combining actual Quora replies from two IIT students): “Sir, you are already too late. You yourself should start taking JEE classes so that your sperm cells get IIT-ready. Then, when your wife is pregnant again, make her also solve JEE problems. So, like Abhimanyu learned about Chakravyuha, your child will get IIT prep as early as possible. And yes, Abhimanyu got trapped inside it."

Sandipan Deb is former editor of Financial Express, and founder-editor of Open and Swarajya magazines. He graduated in Electronics Engineering from IIT Kharagpur’s class of 1986.

IIT Student Who Died By Suicide Wrote A Searing Take On Indian Politics - Huffington Post India

LIFESTYLE
16/07/2019 7:22 AM IST | Updated 23 hours ago

IIT Student Who Died By Suicide Wrote A Searing Take On Indian Politics

In Mark Andrew Charles’s superhero graphic novel, four teenage vigilantes take on a corrupt, vengeful administration headed by a mystic religious figure.

By Nikhila Henry

In the graphic novel, The Superhero Journals, set in Varanasi, four teenagers-turned-superheroes take on a corrupt, vengeful state administration controlled by a masked, mystic religious figure.

HYDERABAD — In his final hours on 2 July, Mark Andrew Charles, an IIT-Hyderabad student, wrote an eight page-long suicide note. In it, he said, “I’m a loser… Two years away from home, at the best institute, with the best of people around me, I wasted it all”. 

But the 25-year-old left behind a compellingly original work, which he had planned to submit as part of his final-year dissertation for his Masters in Design (M. Des) course, that belied his words. 

In the graphic novel, The Superhero Journals, set in Charles’s hometown of Varanasi, four teenagers-turned-superheroes take on a corrupt, vengeful state administration controlled by a masked, mystic religious figure—a yogi of sorts—who brands them ‘terrorists’ and ‘anti-nationals’ and orchestrates a manhunt. 

Charles’s friends from the two design schools where he studied—Banaras Hindu University and IIT-Hyderabad—plan to get the novel published soon in memory of the talented student who, an IIT peer said, had a huge “fan following” on campus. 

Why did Charles take his life three days before he was supposed to submit his dissertation? His family says they noticed a change in him a few months into his second year at IIT. Was it the slump in his grades in the final year? The pressure of not getting a job through the campus recruitment programme? Could it have been the thought of struggling to pay back the loan his family took out to send him to IIT? 

As a rural police station in Sangareddy investigates Charles’s death “under circumstances raising a reasonable suspicion”, it may be difficult to conclude with certainty. 

But a peek into his dissertation gives a glimpse of a young man who thought deeply about what was happening in his country, someone who wanted to engage with politics through his writing.  

‘The Superhero Journals’ 

The first instalment of the eight-part series, that is inspired by DC superhero comics, opens with one of the teens, Ishaan, waking up from a nightmare “that has haunted him since he decided to fight for justice…” 

The eight-part series is inspired by DC superhero comics.

In a dystopian setting in temple town Varanasi, a corrupt cop, Inspector Vishwas Thakur, gangs up with an MLA, Batook Pandey ‘Kadak’, who was once a history sheeter infamous in Western Uttar Pradesh. The two are guided by a malicious sadhu, Vish-Rishi, whose face is hidden behind a dog’s skull, fused with a gas filter canister. As the trio, who seem to stand for the Uttar Pradesh government headed by Chief Minister Adityanath, wreak havoc in the city, four spunky teens—a girl, Vishakha Singh aka Violet, and three boys—Rishab Kumar aka Shortjam, Ravi Mishra aka Omega and Ishaan aka Metashok—decide to fight back. The teens, who are trained in martial arts, don’t just bust rowdy gangs, but also make a hitlist of the powerful figures who aid them. 

Soon, the wrath of Vish-Rishi and his coterie is trained on the teen vigilantes. Like the many students in Indian universities—from Rohith Vemula in University of Hyderabad to the students in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi—who were penalised for challenging the status quo, the four are accused of indulging in anti-national activities and cornered. 

As the colourful, dense plot thickens by the page, it is Charles’s journey as a young artist from Varanasi to Hyderabad which stands out in his final-year dissertation, titled The Superhero Journals: An original and indigenous work of fiction in the style of the Graphic Novel. 

Music, sketches and violence in Varanasi

Charles, who studied in Varanasi until he finished his Bachelors’ degree, was a “good student”—84% in Class X and 82% in class XII—said his parents Nirmalya Choudhury and Abrian David Charles, both school teachers. But it was not his academic performance which made him popular everywhere he studied. Since his childhood, Charles was a musician and an artist. A 2011 YouTube video of him singing the anthem he composed for his school is still online, having received a modest 2,562 views. 

All through his adolescence, Charles sketched, wrote stories and dreamt of becoming an illustrator. The idea of writing a graphic novel first came to him when he was doing his BA in Fine Arts at Banaras Hindu University, he writes in his dissertation. Echoing Joan Osborne’s Grammy-nominated rhythm and blues number, What if God was one of us?, Charles wrote in his Masters dissertation, explaining his journey as an artist, “I thought, ‘What if Superheroes were just people, normal human beings?’ 

The idea which came to him in 2014, as he took a walk on a stormy monsoon evening in Varanasi, became The Thunderstruck Boy, the story of a teenager who acquires superpowers after being struck by a lightning bolt. The draft included a prologue and one short action narrative.

His graphic novel quest did not stop there. He studied hard to crack the CEED (Common Entrance Examination for Design) for a year after he graduated from BHU with a CGPA of 8.4. In the test, written by around 10,000 students who vye for the 150 M. Design seats in the IITs, Charles scored the fourth rank, his mother recounted. He was happy to make the big move, but did not completely leave Varanasi behind. 

In June 2017, when he reached IIT-Hyderabad, his student experiences at the uber-political BHU still informed his creativity. When Charles was in BHU, he had witnessed clashes between warring student outfits of political parties which left two students dead and many injured. He adapted these memories to fit his teen hero narrative in The Superhero Journals.

“I chose the backdrop of Varanasi. Reason being the rich political influence in a land of religion…,” he wrote. The graphic universe he created was infused with a rebellious sense of justice, inspired mostly by V for Vendetta, Alan Moore’s dystopian political thriller with anarchist leanings. The lines of this illustrated world, however, stood out in the strict, non-political, academic atmosphere encouraged by IITs across the country. 

‘A jolly good fellow’

On campus, Charles was the guitarist for most jam sessions and music concerts on campus. He had many friends, and had the reputation of a “jolly good fellow”. But that kind of popularity does not always sit well in most IITs, said students who have spent some years of their academic life there. 

“The IITs are closed campuses. Though there are music clubs, literary clubs and other such bodies which are meant to promote activities, only a few students participate,” a student who has been in IIT-Hyderabad for the past five years told HuffPost India. 

Academic conservatism is the norm in most IITs, said some students who took on the administration of IIT-Madras in 2015. Students with worldviews that clash with norms which govern the premier academic institutions often face opposition, they said. 

K. Swaminathan, a member of the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle in IIT-Madras, who graduated in 2018, said the institute, which was earlier the mentor institute of IIT-Hyderabad, clamps down on freedom of expression.  

In the graphic novel, a corrupt cop gangs up with an MLA and the two are guided by a malicious sadhu, Vish-Rishi. As the trio wreaks havoc in the city, four spunky teens decide to fight back.

“To talk politics, hold discussions or even paste posters, we are expected to take permission. Permission can be denied on partisan grounds. Study circles including APSC are expected to renew permissions to function each year.” 

In 2015, IIT Madras decided to derecognise APSC, alleging the outfit of organising protests against Union government policies and advocating “hatred” against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The institute also banned pamphleteering on campus. 

Representatives of IIT Hyderabad and IIT Madras did not reply to questions. 

Some IITs have started academic research which complements the policies of successive governments even as the institutes fail to critically study the Union’s policies, another APSC member, Arjun Jeyakumar pointed out. “You don’t find many academic projects which criticise the ruling government. On the other hand, IITs get funding to promote research which supports priorities of the government. Scientific validation and research of panchgavya (cow dung, cow urine milk, curd and ghee), which is in line with recent political pressure to protect the cow, is one example,” he said. 

In 2016, IIT Delhi held a ‘brainstorming workshop’ on panchgavya, after which it said it received 50 proposals from top research institutions on the topic.

The academic culture in IIT-Hyderabad is no different when it comes to imposing curbs on students. A student who joined IIT-H after completing his studies in a university where student politics was a common affair, said, “In IIT-H, not many student grievances reach the student body or the administration because most students internalise self-censorship”.  

An artist and the job market

Charles, however, was a student of the Design department, where creative freedom was not completely discouraged, according to accounts by faculty members and M. Des students at IIT-Hyderabad. In fact, until he reached his second and final year, he was pretty happy on the campus. 

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“He enjoyed his first year and was fine for the first three months of his second year. I started noticing a change in him later and it only worsened in his final semester. He started worrying about his grades and job prospects, even though we constantly reassured him,” said his mother. 

While IIT-Hyderabad authorities did not answer queries about Charles’s grades, his family confirmed that they did slump in his final year. 

But a close friend of Charles said he would be surprised if a poor academic record affected him so much. “Some design studios and other companies do not look at grades. Some even provide grade margin to recruit good designers,” he said. 

Though that may be the case, in his final semester, Charles did not land a job, even though he sat through the recruitment drive set up by one of the three companies which participated in M Des campus placements. This was unexpected, given that just around 150 IIT post graduates enter a thriving visual design job market each year. 

An M. Des final year student, Charles’s friend, explained the trick behind getting an offer letter. 

“Getting a job is context-specific. A company may not like your work even if you are really talented because their requirement could be different from what you can offer.” 

The student hesitantly explained further, “Mark was a creative person interested in illustration and animation. A creative person needs creative freedom and he always believed in it.” 

Did Charles’ interests and work, which includes The Superhero Journals, not suit the job profiles offered by MNCs and studios? His friends would not comment. But, they said, Charles did have a back-up plan—beginning a visual design start-up. 

Entrepreneurship, however, is not everyone’s cup of tea and could be beyond the reach of students from middle-income homes. 

“We took a student loan of Rs 2,54,000 to cover IIT expenses. The principal amount was supposed to be deducted from his first salary,” said his mother. 

When he did not get a job through the campus placement cell, Charles applied for a teaching job at a private university in Ujjain.  After two rounds of interviews, he did not hear from them, his mother said. Did he experience a conflict between the artist in him, who sketched a metaphysical political thriller, and the young man who wanted to secure a job to pay back his loan? 

“There are students who get placed in various companies under various salary slabs. Sometimes, one ends up yearning for a good pay package and a secure job,” said his friend.

Charles’s suicide note reads, “I don’t have a job, probably wouldn’t get one. No one hires losers! My grades suck…”. Moreover, he felt that he had failed his parents, who “made sacrifices for him”, indicates the note.

IIT-Hyderabad denied any drop in the number of placements in the institute. The M. Des department had logged 86% placements this year, though Charles did not make the cut. 

In a scorching Varanasi summer, Mark Andrew Charles, the young man who loved thunderstorms, was laid to rest at St. Paul’s Church on July 5, the day he had planned to submit his Superhero Diaries. The final page of his dissertation reads, “To conclude here, I would say… what would have been a project long rejected and forgotten, has come this far. Never lose hope.” 

If you or someone you know needs help, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has a list of resources here. You can also find a list of state-specific helplines on the Aasra website.