Page 24 - EW October 2025

Education News

cent are reserved for SC, ST and OBC a media conference.
students, only 3,360 will be available According to informed
for merit students resulting in sky- educationists, students in
high admission cut-offs. Unsurpris- India’s 23 IITs are under
ingly, the GR has provoked immedi- great pressure and stress
ate political and social backlash. OBC from the moment they
leaders, opposition politicians and enter these prestigious
education activists have described institutions. For a start,
the GR a “merit-killer,” contending they have to cram and
that it privileges caste calculations study long hours to se-
over academic excellence and risks cure admission. Only 1.5-
dilution of quotas intended for his- 2 percent of 1.4 million
torically disadvantaged groups. school-leavers who write
Comments Rajeev Nivatkar, the pan-India two-step
Commissioner of Medical Educa- IIT-Kgp main block: judicial wrath IIT-JEE (joint entrance
tion: “If Maharashtra is to reconcile exam) are admitted.
social justice with academic stan- not a new problem in IITs in general or “All IIT students are products of
dards, the government must increase IIT-Kgp. In 2017, IIT-Kgp partnered India’s weak, rote memorisation-
investment in capacity building, with YourDost, a 24x7 online counsel- driven school system, whereas IIT
and reserve seats on need-based or ling platform to conduct hostel-level curricula are globally benchmarked.
economic criteria rather than caste, counselling and awareness drives. Ear- Therefore right from the start, stu-
while strengthening transparent ly this year, the institute renamed its dents are under great pressure to
verification to prevent fraudulent counselling centre SARTH (Support, keep up with the curriculum. And a
caste claims. Without these steps, Acceptance, Resilience, Therapy and large number fail to do so, especially
administrative shortcuts and politi- Healing), offering one-on-one ther- school-leavers admitted under caste
cal calculations will decide access to apy, psychiatric consultations, stress quotas, who tend to come from weak
professional education more than management, crisis intervention, and government schools. These students
merit or academic planning.” group sessions with assured confiden- also tend to have poor English lan-
Slowly but surely positive discrim- tiality. Moreover in April, QR codes guage learning and suffer most. IITs
ination quotas allocated to histori- with messages like “Let’s Talk!” and don’t publicise drop-out numbers, but
cally oppressed and disadvantaged “Every problem has a solution,” were they are substantial. Moreover, there
castes is being hijacked by aggressive placed on hostel room doors directly is the pressure of parental and com-
dominant castes and rising middle linking students to counselors. Yet, de- munity expectation, love affairs, caste
class. spite these well-intentioned measures, tensions, ragging. It’s a wonder the
Megha Chowdhury (Mumbai) the rash of suicides this year has cast number of IIT suicides isn’t greater,”
a shadow of grief and anxiety across says Prof. Pabitra Sarkar, a re-
WEST BENGAL the institution and beyond, leaving the nowned academic, former vice chan-
campus community deeply disturbed. cellor of Rabindra Bharati University
Not rose beds Prof. Suman Chakraborty of and former vice chairman of the West
the mechanical engineering faculty, Bengal State Council of Higher Edu-
ince the start of the current who took charge as the institute’s di- cation.
calendar year, the highly-re- rector on June 23, acknowledges that Cetainly, this problem is not
Sputed fully residential Indian the system has “certain lapses”. “There unique to IIT-Kgp. Between 2005-
Institute of Technology, Kharagpur must be something wrong in the exist- 2024, IIT-Madras reported 26 sui-
(IIT-Kgp, estb.1951), which hosts ing system for these incidents continu- cides; IIT-Kanpur 18; IIT-Kharagpur
16,678 engineering students on its ing to happen. I am trying to address 13 and IIT-Bombay 10. This phe-
sprawling 2,100 acre campus, 133 km the problem and bring about a holistic nomenon has aroused judicial wrath.
from downtown Kolkata, has reported intervention programme combining Hearing Sukdeb Saha vs. State of
six unnatural student deaths, five of cutting-edge technology in the form Andhra Pradesh (2025), the Supreme
which have been confirmed suicides. of AI-powered emotional health moni- Court excoriated a “systemic failure in
For an institute that is nationally ac- toring tools, professional expert sup- addressing students’ emotional and
claimed for higher education excel- port, and highly personalised interac- mental health needs” in educational
lence, this grim toll indicates some- tion for the well-being of students. My institutions, underscoring that men-
thing gravely amiss on campus. mission is to ensure that such an inci- tal health is integral to the right to
Student self-harm and suicides is dent never occurs again,” he informed life. Prompted by the 2023 suicide of

24 EDUCATIONWORLD OCTOBER 2025