Suicides @ the IITs

About a couple of days back all national newspapers where resounding with the shocking news that 3 students at the IITs took their lives due to the extreme stress they were under. I think there is much more to the matter than meets the eye.

The IIT system as such is extremely flexible and it gives you as much freedom as you could ever wish for. Sadly that freedom sometimes translates into a myopic utopia, where students hardly go to classes, drink excessively and when they are not able to perform end up taking their lives. Well sometimes really hard working students also undertake such drastic steps but I can not think of any reason they might have to do so. Someone who is regular with his studies should not face too much problem managing the course work. At times there is stress, but that is nothing that people should take their lives for. That prepares them for the world they would face once they are out of college. And TOI's claim that "...And there are questions reverberating through India's 'techno Ivy Leagues' about our academic cream being put in harm's way. " is pure crap.

Why someone would take away his life is not a question that I can answer, but I think there are/were ways such incidents could have been prevented.

1. Ragging: I know its a very controversial issue and not many might agree with it but I would like to share my experience on the matter. We used to call them introductions and not ragging at Kanpur. It would normally start off with the fresher introducting himself and go on with the seniors grilling you with gruelling questions. Mind you there would never be anything physical, but facing them would be harder than solving the JEE paper. Once wrong answer and they would take u for a long ride, torturing you mentally for hours. But at least all seniors I was ragged by were extremely considerate seniors and I guess that was the normal case. They were not saddists to say the least. It was just a breaking in session where you would learn how to handle stress and a whole lot of humility. Something that prepared you for your 4 years at IIT. And once they were satisfied, they would be your best friends for the years to come. Advising and helping you through your years at school and later. You could always turn them for any help you needed and they would generally be more helpful than you peers, at least in the first few years. This camaraderie that forms can help you through any problem you face in life.

Sadly even this form of constructive ragging is looked upon badly in these institutes. What the faculty, the freshers and their parents do not realise is that it used to make us better personalities, and helped us come out of our shells. This was one way of passing down the traditions of a great insititution called the IIT. It is this interaction that makes the IITs great and not so much so as what you learn in the classrooms.

2. For once the people of this country have to realise that children that go to IITs are normal kids, they DO NOT metamorphise into Einstein the day they enter college. They are students who work hard during their school, some of them were smart but most of them were very average students or maybe a little above. So please do not burden them with the resposibility of chaning the world. Eventually they might do so, but it is terribly unreasonable to expect that a 16-17 year old can carry the responsibility of so many expectations. They are kids, let them have a normal carefree growth, I think only then they would be able to realise their potential.

Somehow I have felt that the standard of the students in the IITs declined during my stay there. When I entered college there were these seniors we could really look upto. Fantastic individuals capable of taking the world through the next revolution, but sadly there were very few of them as we moved down the years.

And making the enterance eaiser would not in any way solve any problem. It might escalate things in the worng direction as far as I can see.