112 - 12th May 2011 - LET’S STOP GLORIFYING IIT SUICIDES! - Indian Fusion

EVERY TIME A PEDESTRIAN IS RUN OVER BY A CAR. IT’S NOT ALWAYS THE DRIVER’S FAULT!
 

IIT B Student had short Attendance in 3 courses.. CGP : 4ish out of 10. He commits Suicide. Prof’s and System are Blamed.

IIT Kanpur Post Grad Student can’t get a Job in campus placements. He Commits Suicide.

Recently an IIT M Student gets BTP Extension. Spirals into Depression. Commits Suicide. Prof. is under Scanner.
 

Let’s ask a few questions before we begin to get Sentimental about yet another Suicide ?
Should Ganguly have committed Suicide when he was given an Indefinite extension after being dropped in 92 ?
Would you have blamed the BCCI for crushing the ambitions of a 22 year Old? But Ganguly didn’t commit Suicide. He Waited!
 

Couldn’t the Gentlemen in IIT M have waited too ? ( And with all due respect to IITans, Pressure on Cricketers is infinitely higher.)
So, How is some one’s act of Impulse the System’s Fault ?
 

Moving On…
In 2005, one of the very early cases of Student Suicides an IIT Bombay Student Vijay Nakula committed suicide, for getting XX grade (which means you would have to repeat the course because of attendance shortage) in 3 courses among other reasons.
Tomorrow Let’s say a Professor commits suicide for lack of attendance of Students in HIS class. Let’s say, he got depressed for that reason.. Let’s say, he is giving his best, still no one is attending the class. Would you blame the Student fraternity in the colleges for not being serious about Studies…
Would you be willing to blame the System ( Markets in this Case) ?
 

Would the Student Fraternity be willing to go for all the Lectures to prevent any more Prof’s from going into Depression and any subsequent suicides?
Take your guess.
My guess is No.
My Guess is an Emphatic, NO!!!!!

Professor writes a mail mentioning the list of people to be awarded Fail Grade. Student commits Suicide after finding his name in it.
Argument. The E Mail was Harsh!!
If tomorrow a Critic trashes a movie, Can the lead Actor commit suicide citing a harsh review in his defense.. Would you buy that ?
Why are we glorifying Suicides in IIT’s ? Why are we projecting them as Victims of the System?
For somebody who takes HIS own life for a BTP Extension. I am sorry to say is a Victim of his own Choices ! ( Whatever may have been the Circumstances)
So let’s stop projecting these Students as Martyrs. For it creates a False Precedent. A sort of Suicidal Peer Pressure (Pardon the Phrase, but true) among the Students to come.
I call it the Induction effect of committing suicides.
 

SUPPOSED CAUSES OF SUICIDES.
People Blame Academic Pressure for these Suicides.
Oh It’s too Stressful.
I ask, WHY SHOULD IIT BE EASY?
You feel you can take it, fine. Else Quit.
Everyone is fine with the Goods which IIT tag has to offer..
The Campus Placements for Majority, and the other Fringe Benefits of being an IITan. A Default Respect in the Society among other things.
So why shouldn’t you be made to earn every cent of it ?
You find the Pressure Enormous…Quit IIT!!
Do something else. Why Quit your Life?
If you choose to stay in IIT ! Play by the Rules.

THE PARADOX BEHIND VARIOUS POPULAR REASONS FOR STRESS
Some Students blame the number of tests and quizzes in IIT.
Which is ironic because when the same Students were preparing for IIT JEE, most of them would opt for Multiple Test Series. FIITJEE, Bansal, Resonance…That time you couldn’t have enough of them!
So why have the tests suddenly become a Problem ?
You Graduated out of the same system..
People say, Oh the moment you come into IIT, there is a sense of loss of Identity. Toppers in their respective Batches are now no longer toppers.
Well the same happens when you start JEE preparation. Toppers from Various Schools, Join a Coaching Institute, where most of them no longer remain toppers…
So why are the same constants suddenly a problem.. ?

THE WORLD DOESN’T OWE YOU A LIVING! IT WAS HERE FIRST
An IIT K Student doesn’t get a Campus Placement. He commits Suicide.
The Argument given to his friend before ending his life was, Itni Mehnat kari, Itne number laaye.. Phir bhi Job nahin lagi! ”
Can a Hockey Player commit Suicide for the same Reason.. “ Yaar Itni Mehnat kari, Itne goal kiye, phir bhi Advertisement nahin mile! ”
Job Nahin Mili, Suicide kar li?
What bothers me is the mindset of some of the Students that IIT somehow owes them a LIVING!
No it doesn’t. Nor does the World!!
You didn’t create that Brand. Your Predecessors did. So how does IIT owe you anything?
IIT is an Educational Institute. Not a Life Insurance!

SO CALLED FRIENDS!!!
The friends of the person who committed suicide are the first to criticize the system.
I say, If you were such a good friend, why didn’t you make sure he attended the lectures, when his attendance was getting short. why didn’t you drag him to classes ?
If he hates the classes, why didn’t you help him find what he loved doing?
He got extension because his project got delayed, Why didn’t you make his project report. If you think the system pressure can often lead to suicide.. Didn’t you see your friend’s suicide coming when he was failing in courses and missing deadlines?
In one sentence you blame the System and the Pressure, when you did nothing to help your friend though it ?
And the worst part is, none of the friends had an inkling of what was about to come!
So much for being a Friend.
 

WHICH SYSTEM IS AT FAULT?
Which system is at Fault ?
If you choose to highlight these 3 Suicides, I can show you 20 people in the same batch who have done exceedingly well..
Some may be under the same Prof, who is under the Scanner.
3 out of 5000. In Science that’s not called a System Error. That’s called Standard Deviation.
Darwin would have dismissed the same, with his “Survival of the Fittest” Argument.
You could call me Cold, or Apathetic, or Ignorant or anything you want to, but if you are really serious about ending these Suicides.
My Humble Request is Stop Glorifying Every Suicide.
For Every time a Pedestrian gets run over, it’s not always the Cars Fault. Assuming that’s it’s always a Drivers Fault is a matter of convenience. Not Fact!
May be it was error of Judgment on the Student’s Part.
Who Knows?
May be all those Students who committed suicide are regretting it now in Heaven.
May be the recent IITM guy is thinking, ” I could have waited!”
May be that Kanpur guy who jumped thought in Mid Air, “What the F*** did I do? I should have fought this?”
That Girl who hung herself, while wincing in pain on the rope, ” God I don’t want to die! Give me one more chance!”
Who is to know ? May be they are hating themselves in Heaven.
I mean, “I just couldn’t live with myself knowing I had just killed myself.”
In that Scenario would the present Arguments against system and Professors still be Valid?
HUMAN SOLUTIONS.
People have suggested all sort of Solutions.
Ban the LAN. ( Internet)
Reduce Work Load/ Academic Stress
Counseling Sessions.
Now that we have failed with the seemingly Necessary Logical Solutions. Let’s try a Human Solution!
Suicide is an Impulse Decision…
So, I don’t think we need to Subtract or Reduce anything. We need to add something to the system.
Girls. Women. ( Don’t succumb to you Impulse Judgment. Read Along)
May be all Students need ( keeping all things constant) are some Women, or Emotional Stabilizers as I call them.
Most Married Men would testify the importance of their Partner in testing times.
May be that’s why they say, Behind Every Successful Man there is a Women.
There are things men tell their girlfriends, they would never tell their best of friends.
A 2 Month old Girl Friend knows more about you than the best of your Friends.
The Truth is, People are not comfortable sharing their Secrets with even the best of their Male Friends..
1 Because you are constantly seeking their approval, Especially the ones who are closest to you.. So your best friend is often the last person you would confess your problem to.
2. Sometimes you might look upon your friends as competitors.
3. May be you don’t have a Real Friend…
So you can’t confess your problem to your Best Friend.
You won’t tell a person who don’t think is Close enough.
You can’t talk to your Parents. Very Few of us share our problems with our Parents.. For you don’t want to make them tense or let them down (Sounds almost Ironic after the eventuality though)
Who is Left ?
No Wonder None of those friends or the family Saw any of those suicides coming!!
My Guess is a Feminine Shoulder might have helped.
MAY BE..
May be Women are the answer, for IIT’s given their skewed Sex Ratio are Social Concentration Camps, Especially in that Age! For boys as well as Girls. (It’s actually worse for girls than for guys!)
So May be the answer lies in doing something about that Social Imbalance*** (Conditions Apply)
May be it’s just that some of the torch bearers of the Intellectual Elite might happen to be Emotionally Challenged…
May be Minds good at Numbers are not too good in analyzing situations, where No Numbers are involved.
May be the whole problem is that the people in question didn’t have a Confidante..Because the problems in most cases looked pretty manageable in hindsight.
May be the underline problem is Loneliness!!!
The Silent Killer!
May be that’s why so many Silently passed away, without even their closest Friends knowing..
May Be….
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
*** : Having Said that, I am well aware that Women might not be a Necessary or a Sufficient Constant for Emotional Well Being for Some People and Vice Versa… So, I don’t mean to say this is THE SOLUTION. But it might be a part of THE SOLUTION, we all are looking for..The whole point is, Student Suicide is like the Multi-variable Problem in Mathematics. There are as many Variables as the Number of Individuals….. So No One Solution would Fit all…Some Solutions might even sound trivial in the context of the whole problem.. Like the small evolutionary steps which eventually led to Evolution of Species. Seemingly Unimportant small changes/additions, but when Integrated over time, led to LIFE!!
To Integrate my Partially differentiated thoughts:
The Solution to this Problem might not be in (big radical changes in system)/REVOLUTION. It might lie in simple EVOLUTION!
It’s Evolution that gave LIFE to our Planet. It could do the same to our Educational Institutes!
So, Women Idea is my seemingly Unimportant small addition, but may be when Integrated over time, might lead to a SAVED LIFE!!
–
Nitin Gupta
The author Nitin Gupta is a Chemical Engineer from IIT Bombay famous for creating a Cult Play ‘Love In December’.
Fresh out of Campus, he got an offer to perform on Laughter Challenge, the opportunity which he later turned down! The reason is a simple mission .He founded Entertainment Engineers , to make Stand Up Comedy respectable in India and to create a humor Renaissance in this country. Humor he says, ought to have an emotionality to it. We not only want people to laugh and think, we want them to LAUGH, THINK and FEEL at the same time. T.V. was not the medium to do that. So Nitin took to the Stage, College Festivals, Corporate Shows. And in a short span he has already enthralled the Audiences in some of the Biggest College Festivals in India, IITs, NITs, IIMs their Alumini Meets and various FORTUNE 500 Companies.
A Guest Speaker at various E- Cell Platforms and Marketing Conclaves. A TED Favorite. He is widely considered as the most Original Orators and Stand Up Comic of Present times.
This post is from his published notes and all due credit is paid to the Author

23 - 1st January 2007 - IIT suicide boy was not on ‘troubled’ list

‘Mentors’ at the institute, who are supposed to identify disturbed students, had failed to mention him in the list of 10 students prepared by them

Aditi Sharma
         
Posted On Monday, January 01, 2007 at 02:38:22 AM

IIT Bombay student Srikanth Mallepula, 21, who hanged himself in his hostel room on Saturday, was not on the list of 10 students identified this year as 'troubled and disturbed' by the 'mentor system' established by the institution to recognise students who may be prone to committing suicide.

IIT has 30 mentors, picked from among students themselves, spread across various faculties between the second and fourth year. They identify students who are emotionally unstable on the basis of their behaviour as well as academic performance. Once the students are identified, they are tackled by the mentors depending on their seniority. If the mentors are unable to handle them, faculty members and even parents are brought into the picture. Chronic cases are referred to professional counsellors.

The system, started a few years ago, was intensified last year after Vijay Nukala, a final-year student, committed suicide on the campus apparently as a result of academic pressure.

However, the system did not deliver in Srikanth's case, a fellow student who did not wish to be named said. "Srikanth's points on the cumulative performance index were very low. He also had a backlog since his second semester and had not performed too well in his CAT exams. These were adequate indications for the mentor group or any other support group to identify him as troubled and help him out," the student said.

Ashok Misra, director, IIT Bombay, acknowledged it was a "worrying sign" that the mentor system could not identify Srikanth as someone who needed help. Misra said, "It is cause for concern that the mentors could not identify the student. We will now look at improving the mentoring system."

The mentor group defended itself saying Srikanth did not exhibit any telltale signs of stress or depression. "He wasn't a recluse or an introvert. He was very popular with his wing mates and batch mates. There was no way we could have spotted him on our radar," said one of the mentors who did not wish to be named. Some of Srikanth's batch mates who were with him in the hours before he committed suicide concur, saying he seemed 'normal' that day. "Until about 12 noon he was with us -- happy and making everybody around him smile. In fact, a night before he committed suicide he even went for the Mood I Live Wire concert," said a batch mate. One of Srikanth's friends said the sheer number of students on campus probably posed a problem for mentors. "The number of mentors ought to be increased if they want to make a difference," he said.

Meanwhile, people who knew Srikanth well can't get over the shock of his suicide. He loved animated films, was very popular because of his movie collection that he posted on his server at IIT and loved his computer and gadgets. Srikanth, better known as Srilu, hailed from Hyderabad.


Psychiatrist speak
Dr Bharat Shah, president of Bombay Psychiatrist Association said Srikanth's seems a case of premeditated suicide. "From what we know till now, he must have made up his mind to commit suicide. He did not want anyone to know about his intentions. It is not uncommon for such people to mingle with friends and have fun. This explains why he even participated in the college festivities," said Dr Shah. He added that many with suicidal tendencies are able to hide their grief and smile through life.

21 - 31st December 2006 - IIT mates did not get his suicidal vibes

Snehal Rebello
Mumbai, December 31, 2006
First Published: 00:00 IST(23/2/2007)
IIT mates did not get his suicidal vibes

The last memory that Raj Shekhar has of 21-year-old Mallepulla Shrikant is his "happy and smiling face" at 11.30 am on December 30. Seven hours later, he found his batch mate lying dead on the floor of his hostel room number 712.

"I had just returned from Shirdi, and Shrikant came to enquire about the trip. He looked happy and didn't show any signs of depression," said Shekhar.

On December 30, Shrikant - also known as Shrilu - a fourth-year BTech student pursuing electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B), was found hanging from the fan at 6pm by a student from the next room.

According to the suicide note found in his room, "backlog of exams" that he needed to clear was the reason for his suicide. He had to clear two papers from his second year.

His body had been taken to the Rajawadi Hospital morgue for post-mortem. By 2.30 pm on Sunday, it was taken from the morgue to be flown to his home in Hyderabad.

Shrikant's mother and maternal uncle arrived in the city on Saturday midnight. He had lost his father a few years ago. Along with the family, his friends Arjun Arikeri and N Praneeth will also be present for the last rites in Hyderabad.

For his batchmates, the incident has come as a shock. They say Shrikant was talkative, fun-loving and certainly not an introvert. While Ashish Deswal agreed he had academic problems, he said,

"He had decided to appear for the papers in his last semester. He had recently taken a re-examination for a fourth-year paper and was confident of clearing it."

This is the first year that Shrikant was on campus for his birthday on December 7 as well as for Mood Indigo, the IIT-B inter-collegiate cultural festival, which ended on December 29. He did not want to miss any of it, because it was his last year in the IIT.

Other suicides at IIT Bombay

· In November 2003, 18-year-old Vartika Murthy hanged herself in her hostel room.
· In November 2005, Vijay Nakula (21) hanged himself in his hostel room due to poor academic performance.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/196900.aspx
 

© Copyright 2010 Hindustan Times

8 - 4th Dec 2005 - Beautiful minds: The despair behind the IIT suicides -Source-DNA India

Published: Sunday, Dec 4, 2005, 20:26 IST
Agency: DNA


IITians who succumbed:

Lokesh Chand, a third year student Electronics Engineering at IIT Roorkee hung himself in his room on November 11, 2005
Swapnil Chandrakant Dharaskar, a second-year student of mechanical engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, jumped to his death on November 16, 2005
Vijay Nukala from IIT-Powai, Mumbai from finaly year Physics hung himself from the fan on November 16, 2005
I don't believe that the amount of pressure faced by the students is unbearable. If anything, the stress while preparing for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) is much more. Any person who gets through the JEE can sail through the engineering programme with much ease. What is a cause of worry is the way a lot of students spend their free time these days. Instead of using time for recreation outdoors, many are glued to their computer sceen. This eventually affects the grades and piles up the stress. — Lalit Solanki

I wonder what’s all the talk about IIT students being overworked and stressed. Anyone who puts in a modest amount of effort can fare well in the exams. Even if you fail in a paper, you have ample of time to clear it. I think people who eventually get stressed out are the ones who get distracted mid-way. All you have to do is be regular with your studies, which is not asking for too much considering that IIT-Powai is one of the best institutes in the business. — Hemant Kumar

We must look closely before we accuse the IIT and its systems of murder. Often, the pressure comes from family and friends. Nevertheless, the institute has a fantastic support system should a problem arise. We usually discuss our problems with our seniors who guide us through. We also have faculty advisors who are specifically designated to solve our problems. They are very friendly and approachable and most of the issues get resolved once we talk it out with them. We have provisions for professional counselling, should all else fail. — Nitesh Gawali

I see no problem with the system which has been tried and tested for decades. This is the same system that has churned out geniuses time and again. I think the problem begins when people come in to the institute with vague assumptions and expectations. If you come in with the aim of learning, the institute has a tremendous amount to offer. Unfortunately, a few people see the IIT as a sophisticated employment bureau. They see this as a means to earn a lucrative job and this perspective can be hazardous. This tends to make people focus too much on the grades and they miss out on a lot of learning in the process. The IIT does expect a lot out of its students, but by no stretch of imagination is it unreasonable. There's no point blaming the system for everything that goes wrong. There may be a few drawbacks, but there seems to be no fundamental flaw in it. — Aditya Paranjape

A few people do complain about the stress they face in the IIT and that is only fair. However, there are many other ways to deal with the pressure than ending one's life. Low grades seems to be the prime source of stress. However, it would be unwise to attribute suicides to poor scores only. There is a combination of factors which include academic and personal which add up to the stress. A lot of students arrive with unreal expectations from the institute and the conflict between what they expect and what they face can lead to stress.

Different people react differently to stress and it is not always the system that's at fault. When you come in with the object of landing a job at the end of the fourth year, you tend to take it easy in the beginning.

Eventually, after three years you realise that you have learnt little and that can really stress you out. The system has worked over the years but it must keep evolving with time to deliver the best results. — Ashivni Shekhawas

5 - 22nd Nov 2005 - Suicide at IIT Bombay

Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Suicide at IIT Bombay.
 
A very disturbing news has reached me - a 4th year student at IIT Bombay committed suicide after getting XX grades in three courses. XX is awarded when your attendance falls short. The news reached me via various IITB mailing groups, a bit of googling lead me to this TOI report. Excerpts -

Last week, fourth-year physics student Vijay Nukala, known on the campus as 'Nuke', committed suicide after being failed in three courses because of poor attendance. Regarded by all as the campus' networking wizard, Nukala had not scored high enough marks in his IIT-JEE entrance to get into computer engineering, his first love. Nukala had to make a presentation on the first stage of his project report the day he hanged himself in his room. His professors were aware of the stress the boy was under-as a precaution, they had asked his father to be in Mumbai last week.
This is definitely very sad but still worse is the attitude of admin@iitb. The mailing groups are circulating an email, supposed to be written by Sharmila, a professor at the humanities department. The content of the email -
A student dies under tragic circumstances on the 16th and we greet it with silence. There is no official announcement. No postings in IIT-general, in IIT-discuss, in discuss-faculty. No condolence meeting.

Any question we ask into this silence runs the danger of sounding melodramatic. And of disrupting the professionalism with which we go about the business of exams and evaluations. But let us run that risk. Was this boys life so dispensable, so forgettable that we do not even want to mourn him? Is ANY life dispensable?

When Bombay drowned earlier this year we as an institution looked the other way for the most part. (True, there were a few students who got together and organized relief work on the strength of their own will, but as an institution our only response was silence.) It could be argued that we cannot respond to every issue and tragedy out there. But this student was one of our own. I do not know why he felt so alone and lost that he thought he should end his life. We need to recognize however that by doing so he sent us a vote of no confidence. He told us that we, as an institution and as people he knew, did not offer him hope. This is a terrible indictment.

What is to be done? I do not quite know. But surely we need to mourn him. We do not seem to have paid him enough attention when he was alive. Surely we cannot ignore his death as well? We need to also actively explore ways in which we can establish support groups at all levels in hostels, departments. These have to be professional(from what I can gather we have one counselor for so many, many students and staff) and personal. From conversations I have had since yesterday I hear that there have been other attempts, that depression and stress is more present than one imagines. That students have dropped out of courses (at least one student has left this institution because he was maligned for his sexualitygood grief!). That students die in different ways. I do not of course know how to deal with all these issues. But I strongly think that it is not by institutional(ised) silence.

sharmila
 
I don't know her personally and I can't vouch for the fact that it was she who penned it down, but I agree with each and every word above. We've two equally serious issues here - 
1) the suicide and the events which depressed the young man to such levels  and

2) the apathy shown by the IIT by not even acknowledging the disturbing event (as per the mail above).

As per this Mid-day report suggests, the stress in schools has risen to killing levels. The stress on an IITian can get even worse. Back at home they are hailed as if they came down from planet Krypton. Parents, relatives & peers expect them to keep outperforming just as they did in school or in IIT-JEE exam, what they don't consider that here the competition is many times tougher. Such expectations put a student under immense stress. For most of the students in IITs, IIT is the first place where they are challenged academically. Till then, during school, they were among the toppers - without breaking a sweat. But forced to work hard by the raised bar & dropping down to the lower half of the class can be a worry. I've seen all kinds of responses to this new challenge students face - some plainly give up, some take up the gauntlet and study harder. As such a semester can be stressful but an XX grade can be even worse. Typically it means that the student must take the classes again next year with junior students. It can cost one the jobs s/he might have bagged during campus placements, if awarded in the final year. Same thing might have led Nakula to this tragic decision. This isn't the first suicide at the campus, last year a girl student from hostel 10 killed herself and I've heard that there were few more attempts this year. Here I would like to state what one friend told me once - "When we look back at times when we were in trouble, those troubles look quite modest in the hindsight. That should teach us how to deal with problems & problematic times." My final year project was extended and I was supposed to stay there in summer and complete it, I was the last one to get a job in our batch - still when I look back now, all I remember is the good times Dev, Pankaj and me had in the lab that summer. I'm very sure if Nakula had waited and thought over the situation, he too would've came out of this mess. We've had some examples and all of them are doing good.

One trend that concerns me is the rise computer usage in IIT. I've witnessed the internet being brought to IIT Bombay. When we were in the first year, the net speed was just a little more than a crawl. Very few students had computers in their rooms, the computer center was the main resource center available to student to work on their projects and reports. Of course we CSE guys had separate labs in our department too, but the speed was not any better there. I remember when I bought a computer in my second year, we contributed money to the wing-router-fund which was utilized to buy a hub and students did the networking to get their machines on the LAN. In my third year every single room was provided an internet plug, the institute paid for the infrastructure. Additional bandwidth was bought and the net speed went zoom. In our fourth year the number of computers in a hostel were almost tripled when compared to the second year. According to the TOI report -
Students and faculty members admit that all-night (and sometimes 24/7) hacking competitions, gaming competitions, music downloading and file-sharing, chatting and blogging are taking a heavy toll at the elite campus-affecting attendance, grades and even personal lives. IIT-B authorities are now forced to admit that it's a problem. "It's a very big problem. For the last one or two years we've been seeing these guys sleep off in class or be present physically but not mentally. But now they're even not showing up for cultural activities or on the playing field,'' said Gopalan.
A loner in campus would've sounded like an oxymoron in our times, but it seems to be a matter of concern now. A pep-talk by a close friend might have saved Nakula's life.

Finally, the refusal of IIT authorities to take this issue up for discussion is baffling. They can't just brush it under the carpet. It is a very serious issue and has already taken lives. Authorities must come up with some solution for reducing the stress levels. While it depends on the individual for the most part how s/he deals with the stress, some counseling by peers and professors can help. Incidentally, IITB has one full-time counselor for students, two psychiatrists and one psychologist attached to the IIT Hospital, how easily reachable they were is another question. I understand that perhaps the family too didn't want much publicity about this unfortunate incident, neither did IIT. But the issue remains, they have to first acknowledge the problem to come up with a solution.

4-21st Nov 2005 – Did the system Kill IITians ?-Source- Hindustn Times

Did the system kill IIT-ian? by Anjali Doshi
Mumbai, November 21, 2005


About a week before he committed suicide last Wednesday, Vijay Nukala (22) got the worst news of his life: he would have to repeat a year at IIT. It wasn't because the final year engineering physics student wasn't good enough academically — it was because of the letters XX marked against his name.

Last year, the authorities at IIT, Powai, became extremely strict about enforcing a rule that meant final year students with less than 80 per cent attendance would be failed regardless of how they fared at the examinations at the end of a 16-week semester. In fact, they are not allowed to sit for the exams if there is a shortfall in attendance. And their names carry the XX appendage: two seemingly innocuous letters that translate to one lost year in a student's life.

But for Nukala, that wasn't all. Although he majored in engineering
physics, computers were always his first love: he was recognised as the presiding geek at Powai, inventor of the campus' most widely used intranet system, 'Umang'. But the computer science project he had to present last Wednesday as part of his BTech coursework wasn't up to scratch, according to his professor, say Vijay's friends.

Burdened already with the prospect of another year on campus, this
proved to be the final straw for Nukala. He never turned up for the presentation. He was found hanging from the fan in his hostel room in the evening, clutching his cellphone. Nobody is sure whom he made the final phone call to.

Most students HT spoke to are highly critical of the XX system, which came into being, according to faculty members, because IIT-ians were "spending too much time on the internet and the intranet." Faculty members say that attendance is often poor at lectures, which begin at 8.30 am, because students are up all night surfing the net in their rooms.

It was Nukala who had a year ago devised 'Umang,' the intranet service that practically all students on campus use to share software. Although a low rank in the joint entrance exam forced him into engineering physics, even computer science students acknowledged his talent in their field.

But faculty advisors repeatedly told Nukala that he should focus on his academic subject rather than his subject of interest. "Once he
graduated, he could have easily have pursued information technology," said a faculty member.