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Journalism of Courage
Student suicides at the country’s premier engineering institutions have seen an alarming increase over the past few years. As many as 33 students have died by suicide in Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) since 2018, data shared by the Ministry of Education in Rajya Sabha reveals.
The recent case of Darshan Solanki’s suicide at IIT Bombay once again raises the question whether the excruciating hard work put in by IIT aspirants is even worth it. What forces these brightest minds to lose hope in life?
“Academic stress, family or personal reasons, mental health issues, etc are some of the reasons for such suicide cases,” Minister of State Education Subhas Sarkar said in a written response. But is that all? Here’s what IIT alumni, students and faculty members have to say.
Arudeep Kumar, a first-year Computer Science student at IIT Kharagpur, says that when he started living on the campus, all he wanted was to run back to his family and never return. “The initial days at IIT Kharagpur campus were lonely as I had no friends and it was a new environment. I wasn’t happy with the mess food either which affected my overall health. In the initial weeks, I simply wanted to quit IIT and return home,” he tells indianexpress.com.
However, Kumar fought the circumstances to live his dream of studying at an IIT. Meanwhile, students who come to these engineering colleges after studying in Kota feel that IITs offer a more relaxed environment.
“I spent two years in Kota, where JEE aspirants are isolated due to academic pressure and the competition is stiff. So, when I got admission in the IIT, it felt like I could breathe again because we got the freedom to get involved in extra-curricular activities, and we had already achieved something in life now. IITs help recover from the Kota syndrome,” says Vaibhav Chugh who completed a degree in Civil Engineering from IIT Roorkee in 2009 and currently owns a startup, Zapero.
Instead of those from Kota, it is the students who shift away from their homes and family for the first time and reach an IIT who face bigger challenges. “It was the first time that I was living without family and I felt extremely lonely. It was difficult to make friends initially and it was even more difficult to break out of my shell. It took me some time to engage in social conversations and adjust to the new found independence,” Kumar adds.
Chugh also says that the identity crisis and the feeling of being average mostly bring IITians down. When an 18-year-old enters the IIT campus and realises that almost everyone on the premises is a topper, it humbles them, which can even have a negative impact.
Agreeing with this, Rachit Madan, a Chemical Engineering graduate from IIT Delhi says, “When we enter the IIT preparatory years, we are usually the toppers of our school till Class 10. We are accustomed to being in the limelight for our excellent academic performance. The same continues in coaching centres where we top our batches and bring great scores. Students get so used to being hailed as the best in their classrooms, coaching classes or even within the family that when they finally enter the IIT campus and see that everyone is a genius, it brings down their confidence and students lose that high of being the achiever.”
Chugh also adds that another fact that can discourage and end up as a source of frustration among IITians is the competitive vibe of the campus. “Securing a seat in IITs is tough, but we often don’t realise that the competition after entering IIT is even worse. Since everyone is a genius, we have to perform better to rank in the top percentile of our IIT class, which is a lot of pressure,” he says.
Kumar, who has been at IIT Kharagpur for the past five months, also agrees that the “competition is huge and the pressure to get that top rank, good grade and lucrative salary offers keeps adding to the load and can build up a student’s frustration”. He points out that the grading system, which puts students in the same category, “can also lead to frustration as it often does not give that sense of victory or achievement”.
Giving up on the CSE dream
Each year, nearly 11 lakh students appear for the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) in the hope of pursuing engineering at an IIT. Out of these, most students prefer to study computer science engineering (CSE). Given the record, in the last five years, all JEE Advanced top rankers have opted to CSE at IIT Bombay.
Experts argue that in such a case when a student isn’t able to score well in JEE, they settle to get admitted to an IIT while compromising on the preferred engineering branch. This creates undue pressure on the students.
Talking to indianexpress.com, a civil engineering professor at IIT Gandhinagar says that choosing a college’s brand name over the course is a big mistake several engineering aspirants often make. “I have come across several students who settled with the IIT tag for a course of their least interest. Most of the time, these choices are driven by wrong guidance and parental pressure. This leads to academic pressure and by the end of the second year, most students either quit or continue with a bulk of backlogs. Not all students can balance this pressure and often they succumb to it by taking their lives,” Bhatia highlights.
“Right guidance is very crucial for these young minds. Learning should be the foremost priority and not the institute. Both the school teachers as well as parents should prepare students for stress-free student life at higher education institutions,” he adds.
A former IIT director also believes that it can be the poor student-professor ratio that builds up the pressure. Students from different groups, ranks, cities and backgrounds sit in the same classroom to study from one professor.
“Due to the implementation of seat reservation policies, the diversity in classrooms is huge. Now, you will find a JEE Advanced 28th ranker to 20,000th ranker sitting in the same class, especially in the CSE batches. Also, the number of IITs has doubled in the past 7-8 years, however, faculty recruitment is not happening at the same rate. Even the available infrastructure is a major concern. If we want to split the classrooms into smaller classrooms, we don’t have enough space. So, where there is enough faculty, infrastructure is not available, and when there is appropriate infrastructure, we don’t have enough faculty,” he explains.
The former director believes that large classes, and huge diversity in classes in terms of learning abilities lead to this problem of increasing frustration.
Gender discrimination
In JEE Advanced 2022, 75 per cent of the candidates who registered for the exam were male, a reflection of the skewed gender ratio in the country’s premier engineering institutions. However, female students at IITs claim that this gender disparity is not just limited to the enrolment but also in classrooms and on campus.
Aishwarya Bhuta, an IIT-Guwahati dropout, had left her course mid-way in the first year due to gender discrimination on campus.
“In my class of over 30 students, there were only 9 girls out of which 4-5 had dropped out by the time the course concluded. It’s the general insensitivity in society which considers women as weak and incapable, and we experienced such behaviour at the institute,” she says.
“With respect to the lack of a supportive environment, the situation can be much worse for women students as gender inequality persists not only in terms of their absolute numbers but also discrimination and lack of gender sensitivity in terms of how these institutions operate. From safety concerns to lack of awareness regarding redressal mechanisms, women students often find themselves with no recourse to adequate counselling and mental health support in a non-judgmental setup, as the providers of these services need to be sensitised themselves before offering support,” Bhuta points out.
