Posted on 05/04/2006 12:58:16 AM PDT by HarmlessLovableFuzzball
KANPUR: A 23-year-old Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur (IIT-K) student, Shailesh Sharma, on Wednesday committed suicide by hanging himself in his hostel[dorm] room. A resident of Pande Mohal, Nariya in Varanasi, the deceased was a final year student of dualdegree programme at the chemical engineering department.
IIT-K officials claimed that the student might have taken the extreme step under depression after coming to know that he had failed in two courses —advanced thermodynamics and advanced fluid-mechanics. The exams had got over only on Wednesday after which Shailesh had seen the F grading in the two subjects.
According to Shailesh’s batchmates, he had failed in advanced thermodynamics for third time in a row and had shared his failure and acute distress with his classmates. "On Tuesday, he came to know about his failure and was quite depressed. Today he committed suicide after having lunch with us," said a student, who was with Shailesh minutes before he ended his life.
"Though we can’t draw any conclusion, it is true that he had done badly in two courses. This might be the reason behind the incident," said dean of students affairs (DOSA) Prawaal Sinha. Sinha said that the body had been sent for postmortem and parents of the deceased had been informed about the incident.
The incident invited strong reaction from the students who claimed that authorities could have saved Shailesh’s life by changing his course options. Hundreds of students assembled at Hall One where Shailesh used to live and demanded that the grading be made public. They also took to task Professor RB Chhabra of advanced thermo-dynamics who was present there. "We want to know whether Shailesh was intentionally being harassed by the authorities," said an enraged student.
On November 30, a similar case was witnessed when mechanical engineering second-year student Dharaskar Swapnil Chandrakant had committed suicide by jumping from the roof of the administrative block. The IIT-K authorities had then attributed stress as factor behind the incident. Shailesh is the fifth IIT-K student to have committed suicide.
Civil engineering student M Chowdhary had hanged himself in 1981 and third-year mechanical engineering student Yadapalli Venkat and another student Vimal Jha had taken the extreme step in 1987 and 1999 respectively.
"...IPO's based on absurd power sources and ancient Tesla drawings,"
Tesla was sweet. And he DID invent the AC motor (not Marconi).
Quick! Somebody hack into the school's computer and give them all bad grades!
Ah, yes -- two of those courses that convince advanced chemistry students that, by comparison, all "liberal arts" courses are trivially easy time-wasters to occupy the mentally deficient... '-}
Why wouldn't they? Over there it has something to do with getting a good job. Over here schooling just provides some perverse form of entertainment while you watch the jobs outsourced to India.
Yeah! These sure do make shorter work of those matchbox cars!
Now, that I can identify with! [sic]
Those were two of the physical chemistry courses that pushed my math abilities so hard that the corresponding courses in the Math department were almost effortless by comparison...
Are you talking to me ? And what does what you say have anything to do with post 11 to which you are responding ?
I'm sorry...but is this supposed to be funny ? ~ Raj13008
I can't speak for him, but to me it's sad irony.
I am an engineer.
Yep, that's right. And family values over there are strong too. Asians still remember some of the stuff a lot of Americans have forgotten.
Rubbish, rubbish.
If a guy failed in a course 3 times, he would have gone through the gamut of professors who teach those courses.
Furthermore, this is India, where affirmative qaction has run amuch, and there are fixed Quotas for so called "Lower caste" students to be admitted to institutes like the IIT, where everyone else enters strictly on merit (admission rate of less than 0.1%!
If youre competing with the best minds in the country, and you yourself have come in on this "quota" or that "quota", well, you got in, thanks to government legislation, and not because you had what it takes.
But you cant pass your courses on quotas too, now can you??
You can indeed change majors at IIT... however, you have to be SMARTER than others, so you can upgrade the course youre in. IITs have seats for guys from lower ranked courses in second year to compensate for "wastage". I.e. students who failed to make the grade. you cant switch downwards though.
Have you been talking to my son? : )
In the five years I was at college (yes - five, and I didn't hang myself!) - each year we had a suicide - with grades being a large (all?) part of the reason. It was a top-notch engineering school (and small). The kids coming had all done great in High School. I remember one kid in my dorm was all upset the first time he got a "B"!
The one way to look at it was "C" for Credit and "D" for Diploma to keep yourself from getting too depressed!
When I was completing my engineering courses, there was a case of one of my classmates committing suicide...But he did not commit suicide on the college campus.. He went home during the holidays and hanged himself...There was speculation that he was HIV+ . You never know what happened and why??Only the person in the situation and 'Go#' knows it....Let's cut him some slack and those who wan to laugh go right ahread....He is dead anyway...
yes
A young girl we know took her life last week over her marks.She left a letter.
"Of course this is India where 'classism' is rampant. It's hard to tell from the article but apparently some other students think this young man may have been treated unfairly somehow. It is possible that a higher caste professor might not cotton to a lower caste student for some reason"
The only problem is that the student is upper caste. And the professor might be lower caste... and is failing his caste nemesis constantly.
Its highly unfortunate that many of my own countrymen as well as foreigners automatically presume that we are an arrogant bunch.
It was more like all the geeks formed a group, all the cool guys another, then the unbearable over-achievers, professor's-a$s kissers, etc .
Apparently you can in the US.
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