Are the Kota student deaths suicide or murder?

Kolkata: Everybody must be reading about how engineering aspirants are killing themselves in the coaching camps of Kota. Suicide is actually a misnomer as these are clearly camouflaged murders, with the culprit amply at large.

During our emerging years, the price for academic failure was rationally dire. It was a popular perception and a partial reality that non scientific students would not generate sufficient earnings. Thus leading to fractured lives and tormented families, living off tearful ration cards and relative doles. The disenchanted usually preferred to survive under the auspices of ganja, an emaciated drug addict a common part of reality and folklore.

Today's par score is vastly different. In the new India, it just takes courage, commitment and common sense to eke out a decent living, degrees be damned. Therefore the abject correlation between an engineering qualification and EMI capabilities is nondescript, perhaps invalid. In fact, as curious contradiction, dropouts are superheros of modern economies and these stories we know so well, from Apple to the orchard at large.

So then, why are engineering students choosing to end their lives?

Not just in Kota but IIT Kharagpur and several such peers. It is necessary to understand this in some depth to prevent future attrition and build a safer society. In an environment which seems way more liberal than its imperious predecessors. The answer may sound simplistic but is possibly true.

In Nehruvian India, the pressure to perform came from the domineering other, whether family or society. In Modivian India, the pressure to perform comes from within, purely the superboss self. When outsiders are responsible for agony, the recipient needs denial and thus drugs. When self-reflection is the voluntary foe, the brain needs release and thus suicide.

The issue with self-reflection is that it does not take any prisoners, as verdicts are passed within the kangaroo courts of distressed minds. As most folks who are enduring this malaise refuse to talk to others, by dint of inhibition or societal barriers, imaginary or real. A serious departure from the drug addicts of yore, who thrived in conversations with the many or few who were empathetic or even dismissive.

Therefore the consequences of failure have altered over the years, from accountability to legacy. When considered worthy of a diminished life, in the 1970's, the fellows would simply submerge to a lower strata, from eligibility of arranged marriage partner to expectations of sustenance. While still not expelled from a larger umbrella of pleasing identity, the family and not the self being the source. In modern times, the dismissal from the mainstream is autopilot, in the assessment of the dismissed mind and that is is the issue.

Quite notably, sustainable employment then was essentially about survival, food on the table and soap in the shower. Today it is about growth, the ability to take on the neighbours with greater gusto, in deed and procurement. Which actually is the diktat of the ego and not the chimes of a hungry tummy - the difference is way more voluminous than it seems. As a failure in necessary duty is still rational while a debacle in projective ambition becomes a harakiri sin and thus the mortality verdict.

As mentioned, in the opening overs, the Kota deaths are most clearly murders and not suicides. Inflicted by an overdose of unreal expectations, fuelled by a culture of anecdotal achievement. Where the hapless student, struggling to build a bridge between talent and monetization, is mercilessly trapped. Earlier, the destination of talent was the beatific world of recognition, respect and appreciation. Now it is only about money, as demonstrated by the makers.

So the murderer, in my limited assessment, is social media, whether Facebook or Instagram is a matter of pride or prejudice. The artificial universe of limitless gratification arrives, alas, with just the caviar of the destination. Never with the rigours of the journey or the perils of shallow falsehood. The friend qualifying for a vacation halo or automobile conquest may well be simply faking it, but that can severely damage those who are doing the real thing.

What we need now, as a parallel societal movement, is the halo of realness and the not the frivolity of untimely arrival. Here, society's heroes must talk to tomorrow's citizens, with an obsessive focus on their journeys and the learnings from failures, never successes. When the enemy is indeed within, deeply literally, the solution is the deepest dosage of truth, delivered by those wonderful folks accustomed to the lie. Our social media youth icons, whether sport or cinema or start up or simply neighbours.

MADD, Mothers Against Drunken Driving, was an iconic socio cultural movement in the US, back in the days. Today's task for India is SADD,  Stars Against Deadly Deception, driven by every possible youth influencer whatever be the strata, especially new economy successes. To firmly establish that golden ducks are part of the journey and it's never quite over till the pension is demographically earned.

On Kota though, the NDRF must come to the party, by commissioning a mental health peer with comparable skills. To convince impressionable minds that roadblocks are startlingly commonplace while suicide is simply not a smart strategy. Life is clearly non negotiable and only the higher force can press the termination button.