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Student in India engineering school commits suicide over grade.
Times Of India ^ | May 4, 2006

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.


TOPICS: Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: darwinaward; india; suicide
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To: monocle

"Having achieved acceptance under such rigorous rules and then fail could have serious emotional consequences even for well balanced individuals."


YEAH... Ain't life a bitch?


41 posted on 05/04/2006 1:52:04 AM PDT by MedicalMess
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To: Lurker

Don't where you pulled the idea that this has something to with caste from. The fact is that, unlike here, Indian kids feel tremendous pressure from parents and peers to achieve at school. It's that simple.


42 posted on 05/04/2006 1:54:58 AM PDT by fragrant abuse
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To: Lurker

Don't where you pulled the idea that this has something to with caste from. The fact is that, unlike here, Indian kids feel tremendous pressure from parents and peers to achieve at school. It's that simple.


43 posted on 05/04/2006 1:55:01 AM PDT by fragrant abuse
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To: MedicalMess

I think you are a sad individual - seeking perverse delight in the misery of others.


44 posted on 05/04/2006 1:55:21 AM PDT by Raj13008
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To: HarmlessLovableFuzzball

I suspect knowing you won't be doing the jobs Americans don't want to do was a bit too much for him. No coveted H1B visa and $10 per hour American engineering job for him.


45 posted on 05/04/2006 1:57:43 AM PDT by Rightwing Conspiratr1
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To: Northern Alliance

Well said.


46 posted on 05/04/2006 1:57:47 AM PDT by fragrant abuse
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To: Raj13008
I'm sorry, did you not grow up on Monty Python, David Allen, Benny Hill, Marty Feldman and the likes? Oh I'm ssssooooo sorry. I'm just going to cry a river. I just can't take it any more. You've made me depressed with your comments. I'm going to have to kill myself now.


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
47 posted on 05/04/2006 2:00:31 AM PDT by MedicalMess
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To: MedicalMess
You had a Johny Eagle M14 rifle? You lucky bas****. I was promised one if I got an A in algebra, but the best I could manage was a C+. So I had to watch all the other kids play with their Johny Eagle M14 rifles.

I still don't think I'm over the trauma.

L

48 posted on 05/04/2006 2:03:21 AM PDT by Lurker (Anyone who doesn't demand an immediate end to illegal immigration is aiding the flesh trade.)
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To: fragrant abuse
There was a spate of this a few years ago in Japan IIRC, for the same reason you posit.

I expect a lot of my son, but I'm certainly not going to ride him so hard he feels the need to take his own life if he can't pass some classes.

L

49 posted on 05/04/2006 2:04:50 AM PDT by Lurker (Anyone who doesn't demand an immediate end to illegal immigration is aiding the flesh trade.)
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To: Lurker
Yeah I'm still in trauma myself. I tried to throw my rifle across the stream when we were playing combat. But I broke the rifle because the pretend stream was the neighbors asphalt driveway. So I graduated to a Crossman 760 Pellet rifle and spent my time blowing up Matchbox cars and plastic army men. And you know how that goes.

Today it's FALs, AKs, SKSs and Mini 14s.
50 posted on 05/04/2006 2:09:55 AM PDT by MedicalMess
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To: HarmlessLovableFuzzball; Raj13008
Scary. We put a lot of emphasis on school performance for our children. I wonder if it's too much. We always give the speech "You're not competing against your fellow students, you're competing against the entire world..." Then we list what bright children in other countries are doing to excel in school. Our children are wonderful, but probably average in school (but they get straight A's, I simply mean that they have to work to earn those A's.) So explaining to them why it's important to do the very best they can is an ongoing thing.

So I think I'll need to watch for signs I push too hard. My eldest is taking advanced course for his grade, but we will never expect or push for him to skip a level. We recognize that emotional maturity is every bit as important as scholastic capability. He's going to stay with his friends and do Cub Scouts and play Yu-gi-oh like all his friends. I just pray that we can balance our efforts with his needs as a child.

This tragic loss is a lesson for parents and students alike.

51 posted on 05/04/2006 2:16:49 AM PDT by Caipirabob (Communists... Socialists... Democrats...Traitors... Who can tell the difference?)
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To: MedicalMess
I should probably thank my parents for depriving me so heartlessly of that toy. I carried the sting of that humiliation around with me for years right up to the day I walked into my local firearms shop and saw a man laying out about 50 different rifles and shotguns on the counter.

He was telling the clerk that he was getting a divorce and had to sell everything fast. I scanned the counter and there it was; an Springfield Armory National Match M1A.

I picked it up and asked the guy "What's he offering you for this?"

"Four hundred dollars" was the rather morose reply.

I said: "I'll give you $500.00 for it right now."

He looked at me and said "Sold."

That was about 15 years ago and I still have that piece. It's the most accurate rifle in my collection. I can hit things with that at distances I won't even try with my bolt actions.

Now the shopkeeper wasn't all that happy with me, but I've been doing business with him since I was twelve. He grumbled a bit, but eventually he got over it.

BTW I've still got my Crossman 760. My son and I shoot it in the backyard when we're not messing around with his paintball or Airsoft guns.

Great pellet guns those Crossmans. I've had mine since I was 13. It did have to go back to the factory once, but they repaired it without the least hassle.

Take care,

L

52 posted on 05/04/2006 2:19:31 AM PDT by Lurker (Anyone who doesn't demand an immediate end to illegal immigration is aiding the flesh trade.)
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To: drlevy88

"Similar things have happened at MIT, for what it's worth."
________________

Yep, and at a few other U.S. schools, too.

There was also that wacko at San Diego State who gunned down three of his profs because his engineering thesis wasn't coming together.


53 posted on 05/04/2006 2:35:14 AM PDT by DemforBush
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To: MedicalMess

Life may not be fair, but to laugh and make jokes about an individual who takes life's responsibilities seriously is beyond the pale. If this were a story about a football player, a Hollywood celebrity or a rock star, collectively whose contributions to mankind are negative or at most zero, there would be few jokes like this.


54 posted on 05/04/2006 2:37:45 AM PDT by monocle
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To: Lurker
You would not believe this but my dad took my Crossman away from me for 6 months because he killed a rabbit with it. We saw the bunny about 230 feet from the back porch in the snow behind the garden fence. So my dad figures he is going to scare the rabbit by flipping the snow up in front of the rabbit with BB shot. We had a 4x scope. He takes a few shots at 6 pumps power and flips the snow up in front of the rabbit. The rabbit takes a few hops then turns around and comes back. So my dad say, "Watch this, I'm going to put this next shot right in front of the rabbits nose." He pumps the rifle up to 12 pumps, takes the shot, the rabbit shoots straight into the air 6 feet and does three back flips to the ground.

Now my mom is watching this through binoculars and she freaks. "Bert you killed it. You murdered it. It was a thing of beauty a few seconds ago and you murdered it." Mom goes running crying to the bedroom. I look at my dad and I say, "Dad I think you might have killed it." He looks at me and he says, "There's no way that rabbit is dead. It's a BB gun. Maybe it's just knocked out". So he walks out the 230 feet to the rabbit which is lying in the snow. There is no blood. So he doesn't want the neighbors to see this thing. He stuffs the rabbit in his coat and brings it back to the house and lays it in the snow hoping it's going to wake up.

The rabbit doesn't wake up so he skins it. There is a hole in one side and out the other side of the rabbit. He opens the rabbit up and the blood spills out of the chest cavity. There is a hole dead center right through the heart. He takes the Crossman 760 and locks it in the closet and tells me I'm not playing with that rifle again till I grow up.

I said, "Why you punishing me? your the one illegally killing rabbits in our backyard!"
55 posted on 05/04/2006 2:42:31 AM PDT by MedicalMess
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To: monocle
"If this were a story about a football player, a Hollywood celebrity or a rock star, collectively whose contributions to mankind are negative or at most zero, there would be few jokes like this."


Well... Suicides are always game for bad jokes. Hey look at the things that were said about the Space Shuttle crew when they blew up 2 minutes into liftoff. Now those jokes were sick. We are doing unbalanced individuals a favor. If they know that we are going to laugh at them when they kill themselves maybe they won't do it. Adding insult to injury so to speak. It's you people that are sympathetic that are fueling suicides. Poor Johnny SOINSO... he was such a nice boy sob sob sob...

Hey I'm saving lives here!
56 posted on 05/04/2006 2:51:05 AM PDT by MedicalMess
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To: HarmlessLovableFuzzball
"Did it ever occur to you that I might BE the man himself ?"

Hi, Laz.

57 posted on 05/04/2006 2:52:51 AM PDT by knarf (A place where anyone can learn anything ... especially that which promotes clear thinking.)
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To: HarmlessLovableFuzzball

Sharma, the surname is that of a high-caste Hindu and so is Chhabra. So your argument does not hold. There could have been a case of personal misgivings yes, but in 2 subjects?

Don't enforce the world's stereotype of a stupid American by commenting on things that you don't know enough about. There are plenty of well-read and knowledgeable Freepers here who wouldn't want to be clubbed in the same ignorant "class" as you.


58 posted on 05/04/2006 2:53:34 AM PDT by MimirsWell (Kick the sino-butts.)
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To: Lurker

"I expect a lot of my son, but I'm certainly not going to ride him so hard he feels the need to take his own life if he can't pass some classes."

Of course. I agree. But I think the case we're discussing is a fairly extreme example of the culture of hard work Asians expect from their kids. Overall, I'd say we could do with a bit more of that culture over here.


59 posted on 05/04/2006 2:57:40 AM PDT by fragrant abuse
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To: MedicalMess

Laughing at peoples' problems is saving lives? I'll laugh like hell if one of your love ones dies.


60 posted on 05/04/2006 2:58:39 AM PDT by monocle
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