KOTA: The Suicide Capital of the country

I had stopped writing on ‘God’ and ‘Education system’ because these topics are least bothered in a country like India where when an actor says something on intolerance becomes instantly the topic of discussion of news channel while the news of death of our army men ends appearing in a small column in a local newspaper. But this time, it is important for us to think where we are taking our country.

A few days back, I met one of my friends who had left the city to seek coaching in one of the most reputed institute in Kota. I asked him how he felt there and what is so special about Kota, that every year so many kids leave their homes to study there. “It feels like a mini India” he told me, “You can see kids from all the states. The first few days are magical but...” he stopped. I asked him what was troubling him but he refused to answer and changed the topic instead. It was recently, I realized what was troubling him while watching a news channel.

It showed a report of a student, particularly a dropper (Dropper is a student who wasn’t able to crack the entrance exam in first attempt(s) and is preparing again) committed suicide. Not only this, in October this year, three students of class 12^th tried to commit suicide.

Kota, referred as the ‘Education Capital’ has instead turned into the ‘Suicide Capital of India’. Every other day a student commits suicide. Suicide news in Kota have become as common as the news of our prime minister going to a foreign visit (I won’t make any more jokes on that because first, I don’t want Anupam Kher to march to my home and second, I like ink more in a pen). Nobody frankly gives a damn.

So why do these students commit suicide? Why do they think that death is a better option for them? Well before coming to the answer of this question, let me bring some facts before you:

1   All the junk food industry (Chips or instant noodles) have their maximum sale in Kota. More and more industries are being opened every other day in Kota to meet the growing demands.

2   Going to Kota has become a trend now a days. Parents send their children forcefully to Kota in hope of a better future for their kids.

And

    There has been a tremendous increase in the cases of drug addictions in Kota. Drugs and Alcohol have become the new pain killer for stress for kids studying there.

So coming to the question, why do they do so? The answer is as simple as hell. It is fear.

Imagine a class of 60,000 students. Jerks, intelligent, dumb all together. In a test, most of them fail but some of them pass. There are some toppers too. How will you feel when your parents are told that you have a rank of maybe 40,000 out of those 60,000. It is sure to hurt and disappoint. Sometimes this disappointment is what takes a violent turn into suicide.

It is not that those who fail in those exams are dumb or don’t know anything. It is just that they are not ready for the competition. Most of them are sent forcefully by their parents and hence are unable to take the pressure leading them engaging into activities like drug abuse, etc.

After reading all this, there must have been a very bad and disastrous image of Kota being formed in your mind but it is the truth. So how can we overcome this problem? How can we stop young minds of our country from committing suicides? There are a variety of solutions to this. Some of them are below:

1.       In a country like India, we need to discuss these things. Yes we have enough time to go shopping. Yes we have enough time to catch the latest episode of our favourite daily. Then why can’t we discuss issues like student suicides?  It is funny to see that no news channel covered the rate of growing suicide attempts in India but instead showed Rahul Gandhi’s latest interview (Well this must be the last thing they would be showing on national TV)

2.       The government needs to take better steps in order to insure that the students don’t feel like they are isolated. Each year about 13 Lakh students give the JEE Mains but only 10,000 get selected. Well all of them, as per criteria meet the requirement of minimum of 70% marks in 12^th board which means that they are not dumb. They actually have a mind. All we need is to create more resources for them.

And

3.       Motivation is what they need the most. Today we have platforms like Facebook and Twitter where we can share our views. we can use it to motivate them. More student oriented movies should be made (Hey, wait. I guess the censors will end up cutting all the suicide scenes so that is not possible as of now). After all, a failed living student is far better than a dead achiever .