I have a Solution that will reduce pressure on IIT aspirants but do not know how to get this across to HRD Minister of India. Suggestions are welcome. - Ram Krishnaswamy

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Monday, August 28, 2017

IIT-D steps in to make home shift easy for kids - TNN



Krittika Sharma | TNN | Aug 27, 2017, 02:37 IST

New Delhi: Leaving the comfort of home, perhaps for the first time, and being thrust into one of the toughest engineering colleges in India might be an intimidating experience for youngsters. Several suicides and attempts to kill themselves at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, indicate the stress that youngsters find themselves in. The institution has now taken steps to make this transition easier for new students. 

The IIT-D Board of Student Welfare (BSW) has packed old wine in new, more ergonomic bottles, so to say. From making round-the-clock, anonymous online counselling available to students to reintroducing interaction sessions, the administration is doing everything to reassure the freshers and create a cushion of familiar people around them. 

According to V Ramgopal Rao, director, the humanities and social sciences departments submitted a report last month on why students fall back on academics and recommended steps on how to help them deal with pressure. "The departments found that the first semester was the most critical, and if students manage to get through that, they will do well through their course at IIT-D," Rao said. 

In step with the recommendations, the Hindi cell of the institute, till now restricted to translating administrative directives, has been assigned the job of helping first-year students from Hindi-medium schools to cope with academics. Rao himself meets faculty members weekly to sensitise them to student issues. "We tell the teachers to be gentler in their dealings with the students, establish a connection and engage with them on a more personal level," the director explained. 

Teaching assistants have also been deployed to sit from 8pm to 10pm at the hostels and help students with their studies.

As soon as the minors — the first tests in the course — are over, three counsellors will visit each hostel and counsel students on what to expect in the future and how to handle the burden. BSW member Divyam Gupta said this exercise used to be done in the first few weeks after the start of a new session, but was rescheduled to after the minors. Gupta explained this was "because after spending some time here, the students can connect to counsellors better and understand the issues that might crop up".

BSW has also reintroduced the Student Teacher Interaction Council (STIC) dinner, considered last year to be 'ineffective and so terminated. While the earlier dinners were formal and departmental, this year the groups are smaller and the students selected on the basis of common teachers. "In an informal setting, the freshers are able to speak to teachers and teaching assistants in a more relaxed atmosphere," said Gupta.

Sperenza, the annual cultural event, is also expected to help. "Most of the time, only those excelling in particular activities take part because the events are competitive," a student pointed out. "This time, we have organised talks and even meetings with alumni that are non-competitive. These will help newcomers to integrate better."

Monday, August 21, 2017

IIT Roorkee student found hanging in hostel room - TNN

Tapan Susheel | TNN | Aug 19, 2017, 10:46 PM IST

ROORKEE: A post graduate student of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee committed suicide in his hostel room by hanging himself from the ceiling fan on Saturday afternoon.

The deceased, Aman Chauhan, 21, a native of Uttar Pradesh’s Mainpuri, was in first year of MSc (chemistry). His body was found in the institute’s Ganga Bhawan hostel on Saturday around 1 pm.

Security officer of the institute, K P Singh, said that the room was bolted from inside. While no suicide note was recovered, some anti-depressants were found in his room.

Swapan Kishore Singh, circle officer (Roorkee), said, “The reason behind the step is not clear yet. His parents have been informed and postmortem will be conducted once they reach Roorkee.”

Sunday, August 20, 2017

IIT student hangs himself - DNA


Sat, 19 Aug 2017-09:26pm , PTI

The body of a student was found hanging from the ceiling fan of his hostel room at IIT Roorkee today, a senior police official said.

The body of Aman Chauhan, who hailed from Hamirpur in Uttar Pradesh, was found hanging in his hostel room at Ganga Bhawan, SP (rural) Manikant Mishra said.

A first year MSc student, Chauhan is said to have been suffering from depression for some time, Mishra said.

No suicide note was found from the student's room, he said. 

However, a diary has been recovered from the spot, he added.
The matter came to light when Chauhan was not seen by his classmates for a long time in the afternoon.

They reported the matter to the authorities who opened the room and found him hanging from the ceiling fan, the official said.

(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)

IIT coaching: While pressure mounts for students, institutes have the last laugh - Money Control

Aug 19, 2017 04:54 PM IST | Source: Moneycontrol.com

While the government appointed Ashok Misra committee had recommended a regulator for the coaching industry, it is unlikely that one will be appointed soon


By


Viru Sahastrabudhhe, or Virus, the popular character from the movie 3 Idiots used the example of the cuckoo bird usurping the crow’s nest to explain how students would need to crush competition to go ahead in life. It holds true when you have merely 11,000 seats across the 22 IITs with 12 lakh applicants every year. 

‘Compete or die’ is the mantra that is followed when it comes to competitive examinations like engineering or medical. More so in the case of engineering, because among the 22 odd Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the students only wish to go to the top 4-5 based on the location and placement history. 
When you want a majority of your students to get through to the IITs, a feat that only Super30 has managed year after year, you try to get only the best ones. 

Ads splashed across newspapers state that PACE IIT and Medical, which is a coaching institute for competitive examinations, will hold a scholarship/entrance examination called ‘Ace of Pace’. This will be a test for entry into their engineering coaching institutes across multiple cities in the country. 

A few miles away from Mumbai, Paresh Tutorials is preparing students for the entrance examinations of top engineering coaching institutes for Mumbai and Kota. This centre that opened two years ago, operates during the summers and monsoons to only help students get into the top coaching schools. They, independently, do not offer any engineering coaching. 

Cut to four years ago. It was April 2013. This was the first year that the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) the test for admissions into the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) saw a big shift in the examination pattern. Under the advice of the then human resource development minister Kapil Sibal, a new structure was launched where the marks of the Class XII board examinations were to be considered. Further, All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) was scrapped and JEE Mains were introduced with 40 percent weightage for Class XII marks.

This was hailed as a futuristic move aiming to strike at the root of the issue, the private coaching institutes. These changes, he had said, would shift the focus to regular school curriculum and thwart the growth of coaching. Unfortunately, the coaching schools quickly responded by changing their curriculum to include Class XII syllabus as well. 

Four years later, in 2017, the size of the engineering coaching industry has grown to almost Rs 1.2 lakh crore, according to various estimates. And students are going nowhere.

Aakash Chaudhry, Director, Aakash Educational Services (popularly called Aakash Institute) said that their enrollments are growing by almost 15 to 20 percent every year. “We entertain students from as early as class 8 or 9. Scholarships are also offered to students through the Talent Test that we conduct every year,” he said.

These scholarships, which are essentially fee waivers for the coaching provided at the institute, are dependent on how a student performs at the test. 

The JEE examination has been split into two parts, JEE Main and JEE Advanced. Those who secure a rank among the top 2.2 lakh students are eligible for the JEE Advanced examination which is the entry criteria for getting admission into the IITs. For the final admission into the IITs based on JEE Advanced, a student must be among the top 20 percentile in their respective boards, a cut-off for which is released by the authorities every year.

Kota in Rajasthan is considered to be the hub for the IIT coaching industry in India. Thousands of engineering aspirants join hundreds of coaching institutes and integrated institutes that offer both — coaching for engineering entrance as well as regular curriculum for Class XII. Despite the extreme conditions and peer pressure in the city that has also lead to a spate of suicides by students, it is still the top destination every year, even as numbers are coming down. 

Chaudhry, for instance, said that their centre in Kota experienced a lower traffic than previous years. A few other officials from popular Kota institutes said that while the thrust on coaching has not come down, there has been a 5-10 percent dip in the students coming to Kota, since parents want them to study at their place of residence itself. 

In Mumbai, it is a different story. Integrated colleges that had both regular junior college (Class XI and XII) in the morning and coaching classes in the evening have been facing trouble. A case has been filed at the Bombay High Court on this matter and a final decision is pending. 

Chhaya Shastri, Non-Independent, Non-Executive Director at MT Educare and a mentor at their entrance examination coaching arm Lakshya Institute said that traditionally India has been a hub for mentoring and coaching. 

“Yes, there is a rise in the enrollments. Because formal schools are unable to cater to the IIT exams. It involves analytical ability and it is not possible to be imparted at routine hours of the school. But the days of unorganised players is diffusing,” she said. 

Apart from regular coaching, Lakshya Institute also offers a revision tool called Robomate to help students revise the portions at home. Shastri said that apart from hand-holding and monitoring the student, they also have invested heavily in training and development for the teachers. 

For students, this is where they spend the whole day.  Cracking one of the toughest examinations of the country is no mean feat. Sarvesh Mehtani, the JEE Advanced Topper said that Lakshya was like home during JEE preparations. I went home only to sleep. There were either lectures or something important happening all the time. Discussions and doubt solving were always going on and I did not want to miss it. The teachers themselves forced us to take a break with a little fun activity. We played cricket or went to a movie. Motivation happened naturally since everybody was into preparation mode,” he added. 

Until 2012, a student scoring 60 per cent in his/her Class XII board was eligible for a seat in the IITs. There are 32 Boards in India with different patterns of examination and evaluation. 
Taking a cue from offline coaching, online institutes have also flourished. Rajshekhar Ratrey, VP Educational Content, Toppr.com said that their user base has grown over 3 times in last 16 months. 

Ratrey said that the average age of students enrolling for programmes is 15.5 years and the fee is charged for subscription based on the duration. Further, scholarships in the form of fee waiver are given on a case-to-case basis for deserving and meritorious students.

Nikhil Mahajan, Executive Director and Group CEO Enterprise Business, CL Educate (Career Launcher) said that there is a rise of about 15-20 percent in terms of enrolments on a year-on-year basis. 

For physical institutes, the rise in enrollments post the JEE change is clearly visible and is a reflection of the student push to get through at any cost.

Since JEE (Joint Entrance Exam) came into force, Career Launcher has seen a growth of about 30 percent in enrollments as Mahajan said that students are also concerned about their Class XII marks. 

On an average, a 15-16-year-old enrolls for a 2-year programme for preparing for JEE and getting into the IITs. Though, past few years have seen students as young as those in 6th standard start with the foundation programmes for preparing for the engineering entrances.

The fee for coaching institutes ranges from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 3 lakh depending on the type of course, duration and location. Fee waivers are offered to students who perform well in the entrance test of the coaching institute. Financial incentives are also offered by institutes like Lakshya to the top scorers/rank holders JEE Advanced examinations. 

Majajan also said that the reliance on coaching institutes, in fact, has increased over the years. As long as there are sudden changes that keep happening in the exam patterns, a situation of panic amongst students will keep cropping up, according to him. 

“With the cutthroat competition, where over 10 lakh students sit for the JEE Mains and only 2.2 lakh qualify for the JEE Advanced and only around 10,000 students make it to the IITs, coaching institutes give that extra academic push to the students, which is required to crack the toughest of entrances,” said Mahajan. 

Apart from intense competition and unauthorised new institutes cropping up every year, issues related to extreme pressure to perform well and fee hikes every year have made parents a worried lot. While the government appointed Ashok Misra committee had recommended a regulator for this segment, it is unlikely that one will be appointed soon. 

As the engineering schools brace for another change from 2018 in the form of another all-India test subsuming all state and national entrance examination, coaching institutes seem to be having the last laugh.


Monday, August 14, 2017

IIIT Bangalore student jumps from 7th floor, dies - Asia net


By Team Asianet Newsable | 08:53 PM August 11, 2017

Highlights
  • 22-year-old Sai Sarat was pursuing MTech in Integrated Course in IIIT in Bengaluru
  • Sarat allegedly jumped off the seventh floor of the hostel in Electronic City at 5 am on August 11
  • Reason for the death is not known yet, no death note was found 
Sai Sarat, a student of Integrated M.Tech in IIIT Bangalore jumped from the seventh floor of his hostel and was found dead.
22-year-old Sai Sarat hailed from Andhra Pradesh and was staying in a hostel near Electronic City in Bengaluru. He jumped from the hostel at 5 am on August 11. The reason for the death is not known yet.

Reports in Public TV said that Sarat was good in studies and did not have any bad remark as a student. He was in the fourth year of the integrated MTech Course in IIIT. He allegedly chose to jump when all his friends and hostel inmates were in sleep.
Sai Sarat's father Kodanda Reddy is an officer in the Income Tax Department in Andhra Pradesh. The family is financially well-settled. Even the College authority has stated that Sarat was a good student.

A case in this regard has been booked by the Electronic City Police.

After Kavya's death in Alva's School, who was found hanging in her hostel room, many other incidents were reported where students in hostel had allegedly committed suicide.

Especially in Sarat's case, there were no complaints about him in studies or any other problem specified. This death looks mysterious and so far there is no mention about any death note.




Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Zero suicide: not a utopian goal - The Hindu

Zero suicide: not a utopian goal


AUGUST 06, 2017 23:58 IS


A systems-based approach is needed, and we need to start now

Mumbai: Let me start bluntly. We sit atop the global suicide table. But we are in denial of this fact, despite annual and decadal growth of suicide and suicide attempts.

For last the few months, a fundamental question has lurked in my disrupted mind. (I am a sufferer of bipolar disorder for decades. I have lived life with suicidal ideation and more than one failed suicide attempt.) Has the time arrived for the nation to do an about-turn, to usher in a paradigm shift in the way suicidal ideation, suicide attempts and completed suicide is viewed in the country? Can we take a U-turn adopting a Mission Zero Suicide India?

When I first broached this idea in a conference called, ‘Depression: Let us Talk’ on this year’s World Health Day celebration at Bombay Hospital, a noted psychiatrist friend whispered in my ears, “Zero suicide is utopia.”
But I dare to say that this mission is neither utopian nor a pipe-dream. It is aspirational and audacious, but it is a goal whose time has come.

Setting goals
For a start, it aims to get us to shed old beliefs and dogmas about suicide. It calls for eschewing incrementalism in favour of radical, transformational, and systematic preventive agenda. In the Indian context, it also means letting go of the long-held belief that some people are programmed to commit suicide, that in a country of 130 crore persons, it is inevitable that some will invariably take their lives. In a nutshell, it calls for brand new thinking in suicide care, one in which suicide elimination becomes the central goal at national, state, city and village levels.

Why must we aim for elimination instead of reduction?
If instead of banishing suicide, the national agenda is to reduce it below, say, 1 per 10,000, it would still be commendable. But think: what if that one is your spouse? Your parent or your child? Your friend? The goal has humungous personal, familial, societal, and national benefits. Is that not it in itself a sufficient reason?

I will return to this a little later. Let us first get an idea of how serious the Indian suicide problem is.

                            Akhileshwar Sahay.  

The numbers
While the causes — or sets of causes — of suicide are complex, analysis of the patterns, causes, and effects need not be. Unfortunately, there are no reliable statistics of how many Indians commit suicide annually. Data on suicide attempts is so opaque that any attempt to understand it is like groping inside a black box in the dark.

Here is what we do know.
The first representative research on the prevalence of suicide in India, by my friend Dr. Vikram Patel and his colleagues, was published in the reputed British medical journal Lancet in 2012. The paper said that in 2010, an estimated 1,87,000 persons aged 15 years or older committed suicide (1,15,000 men and 72,000 women). The age-standardised suicide rate per 1,00,000 is 26.3 for men and 17.5 for women. The worst finding, for me, is 40% (45,100 of 1,14,800) of suicide deaths in men and 56% (40,500 of 72,100) in women occurred between ages 15 and 29.

If this is not damning enough, a first-of-its-kind comprehensive report, Preventing Suicide: A Global Perspective, published by WHO in 2014, reported that 2,58,057 (158,098 men and 99,977 women, 61.26%:38.74%) Indians committed suicide in 2012, the largest number for any country in the world. India is the secondmost-populous country, but the absolute number is much higher than China, the most populous. It also confirmed the findings of the Lancet study about the very high suicide rate in the 15–29 age group. The study added the caveat that the rate of suicide in developing countries, including India, was highly underreported.

WHO estimates of global suicide numbers are between 800,000 to a million people a year. Indian suicides, it says, are more than 25% of global numbers. (Whereas we are around 17% of the world’s population.)

Official numbers in India, however, differ. The latest suicide data, for the year 2015, compiled by National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), puts the total number of suicides at a measly 1,33,623, a little more than half the WHO number. It does admit, though, to an increase of 17.3% since 2005 (when there were around 1,13,914 suicides). The data says the male to female ratio for 2015 was 68.5%:31.5%, a significantly greater ratio of male suicides than the WHO figures.

The flaws in our data
However hard I attempt to digest this data, even granting it the status of a half-truth, it still presents itself to me as a blatant lie perpetrated on the nation. I have informed reasons to say so.

One, in a country where citizens are taught to fear the police, data calculated from police records is bound to be unreliable. Two, suicide numbers reported by WHO and in Lancet research mock the veracity of NCRB data. Three, Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code criminalises suicide attempts, resulting in gross underreporting of suicides and attempted suicides. Four, aside from the law, the stigma stops families from reporting suicide and suicide attempts. Five, our unreliable death registration process ensures that a large number of actual suicides simply die uncounted.

More than the numerical blunder, NCRB data scores atrociously high on the callousness with which it reports the causes of suicide. It lists a disparate set of 29 reasons (including nine sub-reasons) in the heartless manner that only the Indian police system is capable of. They are, indebtedness, four distinct marriage-related issues, family problems, impotency, five chronic illnesses, bereavement, drug abuse/alcohol addiction, fall in social reputation, failure in love affairs, poverty, unemployment, property dispute, illicit relation, physical abuse and career problems. Ironically, one of the causes it lists is the insane word ‘insanity.’ (The correct term is mental illness; words like insanity and lunacy — as in the Luncacy Act, 1912 — do not have a place in independent India.

Also, while providing this large inventory of reasons, NCRB misses the big picture. That is, in every reason for suicide reported by it, stress, distress and depression are constants.

An alternative study
Dismayed by the paucity of reliable data, the lack of authenticity of the aetiology, and, if I may say so, the incompetence of the NCRB, I conducted my own small study. I recorded media-reported suicides, along with possible reasons for the suicides, of the current year. The size of my sample is a little over 2,000. The people varied from an eight-year-old child in north-east India to an 85-year-old from Mumbai.

The list included school, college, nursing, medical and engineering students (including from the prestigious IITs and Banaras Hindu University), aspiring PhDs, journalists, blue- and white-collar workers, labourers, maids, farmers, government employees, film and TV actors, military, paramilitary and other uniformed personnel, homemakers, wives and husbands, even suicides by full families, including grandparents and even a great-grandfather. They represented both sides of the so-called ‘Bharat versus India’ schism. Their circumstances and their methods differed: some were on impulse and others clearly pre-meditated or well-planned, some seemed of ‘sound mind’ and others seemed in some way mentally unstable to those who knew them.

But there was one strong causative factor unifying all the cases: extreme distress and stress.

Some learnings from my data and other sources are sobering.
Every hour, two, may be more, young Indians commit suicide.
Every year, more than 20,000 Indian homemakers — housewives in older parlance — take their lives.

As per a Government of India affidavit to the Supreme Court in 2017, during recent years, 12,000 farmers have committed suicide annually.

While suicide rates in the 30-50 age group are alarming, and geriatric suicide too shows an uptick, the rate in the 15–29 age group has reached monstrous proportions.

The economic imperative
Naysayers will say that none of these is a valid reason to find money in the exchequer for costly solutions like the elimination of suicide.

I humbly posit that aside from the humanitarian reasons, there is a good economic reason to address the issue. Here are my ballpark numbers and reasoning.

Based on the WHO, Lancet, and NCRB data, if I conservatively estimate an annual suicide number of 2,00,000, with a 35-year median age, the lifetime annual productivity loss to the nation is 50 lakh person-years.

Assuming — again, conservatively — that as many as 50% of those who commit suicide annually would have had no earnings if they had lived their full lifespans, the approximate loss to the economy at current per capita income from the loss of the other 50% would be ₹25,000 crore.
These numbers do not slow down: next year another 2,00,000 people will get added to the count, and the next, adding to the lifetime economic loss. It is a vicious cycle.
It makes sound economic sense, in other words, to eliminate suicide.

Is it possible?
What would Mission Zero Suicide entail? Is it even workable in Indian conditions?

Mission Zero Suicide is a systems-based approach that that starts by saying every suicide death is preventable. It employs a holistic strategy for suicide prevention: one that is timely, patient-centric, and equitable.

It then asks, what proximate and long-term strategies and interventions are needed to disarm, wean away, or engineer away a suicidal person from stress, distress, depression, anxiety, a deep sense of loneliness, nothingness, social and other alienation, traumatic conditions and/or other severe psychiatric disorders that propel humans towards suicidal ideation and suicide attempts?

Has such an approach ever worked?
Let me give two examples in which I believe the learnings are replicable.
In the first, the Henry Ford Health System, a non-profit healthcare provider in Detroit, Michigan, USA, introduced an innovative holistic suicide care system in 2001, called Perfect Depression Care Intervention. The approach included six major tactics: committing to perfection (zero care-processes defects, or zero suicides) as a goal; mapping current care processes and developing a clear vision of how patient care must change; partnering with patients to ensure their voice in care redesign; conceptualising, designing, and testing strategies for improvement in four areas identified in the mapping of current care (patient partnership, clinical practice, access to care, and information systems); implementing relevant measures of care quality, continually assessing progress, adjusting the plan as needed, communicating the results and celebrating the victories.

This systematic quality improvement brought about a dramatic reduction in suicide; its high points were in 2008 and 2009, which witnessed zero suicides; since then, while the rate has inched up to 5%, but that number is less than half the US national average.

Detroit’s success has propelled many organisations, cities and countries in the Americas, Europe and Oceania to pursue zero suicide missions. Theirs is not a magic bullet; to achieve even half Detroit’s success, and to sustain it, needs coherent strategy and dogged pursuit. Also, one must insulate such programmes from vested interests, like the pharma industry.

The second example did not start with suicide prevention. Sweden’s Vision Zero’s initial premise was that traffic deaths and car accidents were unacceptable, that the state should go to great lengths to prevent them. Through an act of Parliament in 1997, Sweden called for an end to deaths and serious injuries on Swedish roads.

The improvement happened because of a drastic change of thinking. It widened the responsibility for road safety, from the road user alone, to include road designers. The vision was implemented around ‘plank’ strategies, and it had an action plan that helped it focus. The results: from seven road deaths per 100,000 population in 1997, today they are around two. Vision Zero thinking is now embedded in every part of Swedish life.
In 2008, Sweden adopted Vision Zero for suicide prevention, with these nine strategic interventions.
Promoting better life opportunities in order to support the groups that are most in need

Minimising alcohol consumption in target and high-risk groups
Reducing the availability of means to commit suicide
Educating gatekeepers about effective management of persons with suicide risks
Supporting medical, psychological and psychosocial services in suicide prevention
Disseminating knowledge about evidence-based methods for reducing suicide
Raising competence of key healthcare and prison staff who care for people with suicidal problems
Analysis of suicide cases which occurred within the healthcare system and 28 days after discharge
Supporting voluntary organisations.

A key feature of Vision Zero Suicide is the promotion of the ideal: that suicide is everyone’s responsibility, and first-aid training to help suicidal persons is provided for every citizen. Though it has not met its desired success rate, application of its methods has spread to Singapore, the USA and Europe and West Asia.

Intent, I must add, is not enough.

For example, America as a whole has employed the most tools for suicide prevention, right down to the provincial level, and including a 24/7 national helpline, but in the last decade, the suicide rate has gone up, not down. Thomas Insel, long-time (and now former) director of the USA’s National Institute of Mental Health, considers this his key sorrow.

A plan for India
What can we learn from initiatives in other parts of the world, and replicate here in India?
This is my nine-point programme for India. Let’s call it Nine to Zero.
Make the elimination of suicide not just a national mission but also every citizen’s mission
Jump-start the National Alliance for Suicide Prevention in public, private and NGO-coalition mode
Invest in multidisciplinary research: suicide has a complex aetiology
Think global but act local: Indian states are as different from each other, if not more, than some countries are, and one size will not fit all
A dovetailed suicide prevention strategy is needed at central, state, city and village level; this is a long-haul effort
Learn from the successes and failures of others
and urgently create a National Task force for formulating suicide prevention strategies and implementation plans
Adopt an empirical, evidence-based approach to intervention
Reduce access to the means of suicide, and use technology (to count suicides and suicide attempts, as well as to disseminate why and how it has to be eliminated) and introduce multidisciplinary review of suicide attempts
There is a crying need for a best practices communication strategy, including for media and social media

And Point Ten, or should I say, Point Zero: we must start now.

Monday, August 7, 2017

Former IIT Kanpur student sits on railway track to end life, rescued - TNN

Abhinav Malhotra | TNN | Updated: Aug 5, 2017, 11:32 PM IST

KANPUR: An ex-student of IIT-Kanpur allegedly tried to commit suicide by sitting on the railway track near institute campus in wait for a train to arrive. The former IITian took the extreme step on Friday night. He was saved by the railway staff who had spotted him. He was later handed handed him over to Kalyanpur police. The police during interrogation came to know that Ravi Kant (name changed) was upset ever since he was not getting a document from IIT-Kanpur which he was requiring to get job abroad. The IIT-Kanpur administration however, said that the ex-student was perturbed over some issue which was not related to any administrative work at the institute.

The Kalyanpur police learnt that the former IITian had passed out from the institute in June 2017. Police said that since it was taking sometime in the processing of the documents at IIT-Kanpur, he was perturbed. "It seems more over he was mentally engrossed with some personal issue which he was not able to express before us. When police came to know about that this, student had gone to attempt suicide at railway track near IIT-K, he was rescued and brought to Kalyanpur police station where he was counselled. His family had been informed about the incident late on Friday night itself. As his family is in Ranchi, he was handed over to a local guardian at about 2 am", said Circle Officer, Kalyanpur, Rajnish Verma while talking to TOI. He said that the ex-student was spotted at the railway tracks 9 pm on Friday. 

"He was reluctant to talk and mention about his problem. He was showing haste in going home. He was counselled a lot and got a bit comfortable after which he was made to eat dinner", the official said.


The IIT-Kanpur authorities informed TOI that the student had passed out in June this year and there is no pending administrative work related to this ex-student. Assistant Registrar, Information Cell (IIT-K), Sarang Nandedkar told TOI that the student is now an alumnus and there is no administrative delay which has caused inconvenience to him.