Students need emotional and mental support

Trend of suicides at Kota has left the nation numb. City, once known for hope of engineering and medical aspirants is now turned into a city of suicides. This really is heart saddening and condolences to the families associated. It is an alarming time to know the root cause of the problem.

Is it really a Hall of fame?
One of the nation building projects of our country was the Indian Institute of Technologies (IIT) across India. Now, over a million aspirants compete to be among 10000 top students to enter IIT every year. Due to its overachieving alumni, IIT has further become a brand.

A list of achievers makes the students aspire more for being an IITian. Once you pass from the IIT, you have a shinier prospective of your future – socially, personally, economically and mentally; so as the premier medical institutes like AIIMS and JIPMER.

When we see a dream, so big, we give all our efforts for that. So naturally the industries getting the students prepared for IIT and Medical has deep rooted in India and its nerve is situated in Kota (Rajasthan).

What makes ‘Me quit’
Recent years have proven deadly for these students. Starting from 2014, where around 100 of them ended their journey, followed by 47 and 17 of them in the successive years till date. It is a matter of ROI (return on investment), said by many parents.

Parents invest around 6-7 lakhs for the 2-year preparation at Kota and hence they expect more from their kids, as they invest all the property Keeping this financial and social pressure on one shoulder, the aspirants compete with the millions.

We must know the facts that every year more than 3 lakh students arrive in Kota to study in various institutes but hardly 10-12 thousand of them qualify various competitive exams. So what about rest of them?

Is Kota really a hub for success?
We met Mrs Geeta (name changed), Mother of a sixteen-year-old daughter who shifted from Bihar to Kota. She said that in Kota, a student gets a lot of time for studies. My daughter does not go to any school, studies in her institute for 7-8 hours a day and then at home doing assignments for another 7-8 hours.

So she is totally committed to the studies and hopefully will clear her medical entrance exam. Her husband sold their land for the expenses. She said that once the girl joins a good medical college, we can buy more land. Now the question is what if she doesn’t?

There are lakhs of other students staying in small cramped rooms in Kota who are just the victim of the over-ambitions of their parents. Parents have sent them to Kota by arranging the money from all their lifetime savings hence student is already under pressure when he or she is arriving in Kota.

Now when we subject him to 7-8 hours of coaching, another 7-8 hours of assignments, no school, no friends and no entertainment, we can assume the pressure on the mind of a 14-year-old student.

There is another kind of pressure to the students. In most of the institutes, the students are segregated in batches from A1 to A8, with the decreasing order of their performance. To be in the top batch, many of them put themselves under stress and strain, with a study schedule of 16-18 hours a day.

This pressure is further enhanced by their over-ambitious parents who instigate their wards to come in the top batches. This kind of social pressure, coaching pressure, personal pressure, staying away from family, family pressure, competitiveness or the parent’s obsession over their children’s future actually work towards ruining the life of a student.

There are serious questions: -
Are we really doing justice by exposing the kid to such hardship?
Will he be able to study without the support and care of family?
Will he be able to prepare himself for the future without any proper school education?
Don’t you think that this education system is responsible for the death of so many budding talents?
Why did ‘I’ choose to quit?

A recent case of suicide, after succeeding in the JEE, has kept everyone thinking. A 17-year-old IIT aspirant, Kriti Tripathi, jumped over a 5-storey building only because she was tired and had no strength left – as mentioned in her suicide note.

Another heartbreaking case show that the girl ended herself even after cracking the JEE with good scores. This extreme step taken by her had only reason that she never wanted to be an engineer. A clear case of over ambition of the parents.

18-year old Anjali Anand from Moradabad preparing for AIPMT from a reputed institute in Kota hung herself from the ceiling fan at her hostel. Her suicide note states that she took this extreme step due to her inability to fulfill her parents’ dreams and felt over burdened with the study stress and tension. It was her second attempt after failing in her first attempt previous year.

Another Class X student at Jaishree Vihar, Kota allegedly committed suicide by hanging herself in her room. The sixteen year old kid left a suicide note stating the stress and problems in studies and was distressed over it.

Parental Support – A guiding light to ‘Me’
The main question remains un-answered as to who is responsible to force the students to commit suicide, then what drives them to take such a bold step? It is said that it takes more courage to die than to live and face challenges.

Are the coaching institute of Kota who have turned into money making machine responsible for this? Is this the misconception in the minds of students, or the lack of motivation?

Parents should also come up to speak with their kids as to which field is his/ her kid interested in, instead of manipulating them emotionally.

Emotional and mental support – A much needed support your child may be deprived when he is away from home as it can be psychologically taxing. This ensures the elimination of undue pressure and provides positivity to the child.

A Proper School study- It is proved beyond doubt that studying in a school psychologically affects a child. His routine, mingling with friends, games, co-curricular activities etc. help overcome the stress portion of a budding talent to much extent. Students studied in proper schools especially in hostels have performed relatively better than the ones who studied at home or in isolation.

Encouragement and love – a child need your word of encouragement and love to keep his optimism in tact as he is in a place with cut- throat competition and under performance anxiety.

Hobby and relaxation – with the demanding regime of preparing for a competitive exam, stress level of the aspirant tend to increase, leading to depression. Hence teach your kids to relax and rejuvenate by taking up some hobby.

Trust your abilities – allow your child to bloom into their own and as per their own aptitude. Just teach them to build confidence in their abilities to compete with self than others.

This is not the end – these kind of supportive words do help the kids remove most of their burden and mental pressure and they actually develop a positive attitude for achieving it. Failure to join engineering or medicine is not the end of life, and there are plenty of success options to be financially better and secure.