Just 40 days into the first year of her Intermediate at the Chaitanya Junior College in Vijayawada, Seelam Lohita Reddy decided that she had had enough of the hellish routine that the college imposed on her. That’s when she climbed up to the fifth floor of her hostel campus and jumped. The 16-year-old’s life ended in a pool of blood — on August 12.
The silence that pervades her home at Khammam is wrenching and her guilt and grief-stricken parents, Leelavati and Ramachandra Reddy, are barely audible as they recollect her torture.
Lohita would be woken up at 3.30 am to get ready for classes that would begin 90 minutes later. Bathrooms in the hostel were few and always crowded. The classes would end late at night and Lohita was allowed to sleep only around 11.30 pm. Four hours of disturbed sleep was all she could get.
On “homesick” leave, Lohita complained about the punishing schedule. “We sent her back to college, saying she could return if she couldn’t cope with the pressure,” recalls her brother Bhargav. “The very next day, she committed suicide.” Adds her grandmother, Achamma: “Lohita was a strong girl who had stayed in a hostel earlier too and scored 80 per cent in Class X. But this was no college. It was a prison.”
The concentration camp-like atmosphere in corporate colleges is now accepted as typical. Most parents expect their children to endure the 20-hour-a-day grind to clear the Engineering and Medical Common Entrance Test (EAMCET) and IIT entrances oblivious of the toll it exacts on the youngsters.
In Nellore — in the state’s southwest — D Renuka, a senior inter student at the Narayana Junior College, hanged herself in her hostel room on August 24.
She had not been keeping well since her appendectomy last year, but none had sympathy for her. Her teachers allegedly reprimanded her several times for staying away from classes and the August 24 ticking-off proved to be the last straw.
A week later, another student of the college followed in the footsteps of Renuka. On September 1, a junior inter (MPC) student, Mounika, hanged herself after the teachers took her to task for lagging behind in studies. That day, Mounika stayed back in her hostel room, complaining of sickness and found in death the freedom she had been longing for.
Not only corporate colleges, the education system itself isn’t student-friendly. Take the case of A Tejaswini who aspired to study at Shastra Engineering College in Tamil Nadu. Despite hard work in Intermediate and two attempts in successive years, she failed to get a seat there. Her parents thought she had tried hard enough and discouraged further attempts. But Tejaswani thought death was the only solution and jumped from her Hyderabad apartment on July 9.
Neerada Reddy Committee
A few years ago, when the pro-BJP student organisation, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, protested the questionable teaching methods employed
by some colleges, the state government appointed
a committee headed by Prof P Neerada Reddy to
go into the issue in 2001.
The panel’s report noted that the confinement in the shabby premises of commercially driven coaching centres from 7 am to 8 pm did no good for the genuine mental growth of the youngster. It
observed that nowhere in the world did such unhealthy competition exist. While teaching, learning and evaluation was focused solely on EAMCET preparation, other aspects important for the all-round development of a student’s personality were relegated to the background.
In some instances, parents were exerting pressure on the children and transferring on them their anxieties, covertly or overtly, without regard to the emotional and psychological needs of the youngsters and their capacity to handle such pressures.
The objectives of Intermediate education, on the one hand, and coaching centres geared to preparing students for tests like EAMCET, on the other, were not compatible on many counts. The integrated coaching offered under the same roof with a combination of two types of instruction led to contradictions and anomalies in teaching and learning, the report said.
Though the Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) acted on the findings and issued directions, they are observed more in breach. The BIE had
directed that there be no instruction and no tests on Sundays and holidays, that students be left free
between 4 pm and 6 pm every day, no instruction
be given before 7 am and after 7 pm to hostel inmates and that instruction and study hours add up to
not more than nine or ten. But who is there to
enforce these guidelines?
The prescriptions
Suicides continue and so does the blame game as to who is responsible, with parents and college authorities pointing fingers at each other. But how is the problem to be addressed?
“Rather than searching for reasons outside, we as parents have to look within to figure out what means more to us, our children’s marks or their happiness,” says Venkateswara Rao who runs an NGO. He pulled his son out of a corporate college in Hyderabad after a few horrific incidents there.
Forming of committees like Neerada Reddy’s is just a knee-jerk reaction, feels IIT guru, educationist Chukka Ramaiah, an MLC. “It’s sad we debate these only when a student takes the extreme step. In fact, there are many cases that do not come to light.”
“The problem,” adds E Satyaprakash, assistant professor in the University of Hyderabad, “lies in the curriculum itself, with most of it being compilation of factual knowledge required for competitive
examinations. More emphasis should be laid on students understanding their own sexuality, environment and multiculturalism, given that they have just reached adolescence.”
Then there’s the issue of absence of social relations in academic space. As K Laxminarayana, a senior faculty member in economics and member of the AP Save Education Committee, notes, “the worst part can be witnessed in corporate colleges where students are segregated, and hence stigmatised, on the basis of performance.”
Asha Murthy, administrative principal of St Mary’s Junior College, Himayatnagar, says it’s for the parents to find out where their children’s interests lie. “Forcing them into a stream in which they are not interested in can lead to frustration,” she warns.
Some educationists point out that the government should not evade its responsibility. “The state should play a monitoring role and ensure that norms for running an educational institution are followed,” observes Prof S Srinath from Kakatiya University. “For example, playgrounds are a must. But how many private colleges and schools have them? Most of them operate from cramped premises.”
On the other hand, corporate college authorities claim that it is parents who insist on a rigorous schedule for their wards. Notes the manager of a corporate college: “If we relax the schedule a bit and a student gets less marks, parents deluge us with complaints. They just want their wards to get top marks.”
Psychiatrist Hemant Chandorkar says parents should closely monitor their children’s feelings. “Any abnormal behaviour, brooding or tense look should be taken as an alarm bell,” he advises. “Kids should be made to understand that their academic performance would not in any way alter their relations with parents. This would make their wards feel secure and ensure their well-being.”
Ranjaa Haladker, director of Roshini, a helpline for people with suicidal tendencies, says his office gets nearly 400 calls per month, mostly from Intermediate students or EAMCET aspirants — both from rural and urban backgrounds. The counsellors
befriend the callers, try to understand their problems and give in-house counselling if needed.
(with inputs from V K Rakesh Reddy,
P Hareesh and Ramakrishna Bhargav)
— diwakar@epmltd.com
Ruthless routine
A typical day starts around 3.30 am. Students have to make a beeline for the bathrooms, get ready by 4.45 and be present in the classroom by 5 for the preparatory class. The day is packed with classes till late into the night — about 11.30 pm — with a break of only two hours in between: for breakfast, lunch, dinner and an evening snack.
Weekly unit tests are a nightmare: teachers read out marks in front of other students, mocking the “under-performers”. Punishment: extra hours of study into an already tight schedule. For girls, there’s the extra problem of possible fatigue during periods. But punishments are seldom gender-sensitive.
Lofty idea to mere business
Andhra Pradesh was introduced to the concept of residential schools in the early 1970s, courtesy scholar-educationist P V Narasimha Rao’s efforts to impart quality education to students in rural areas. He founded the AP Residential Educational Institutions Society (APREIS), an autonomous body with the education minister as chairman and bureaucrats as board members. The semi-government organisation had norms of its own and the teachers and the staff enjoyed special pays and perks though the government them.
The APREIS initially established residential schools at Sarvail (Nalgonda district), Tadikonda (Guntur district) and Kodeganahalli (Anantapur district). For several years, students from these schools bagged top SSC ranks (almost sweeping 1 to 20) at the state level.
By the late ’80s, the list got more schools and even a junior college (for the intermediate course) established in Vijayapuri (South) at Nagarjuna Sagar.
Students from this college, the AP Residential Junior College, started bagging state ranks and a good many seats in the IITs.
The success of the Residential Education model caught the attention
of businessmen and triggered a mushrooming of corporate schools/colleges that turned teaching into a money-spinning enterprise with the attendant illegal and unethical practices. Both teachers and students were poached
on and ranks managed for their students.
Today, the fiercely competitive corporate institutions in the state have turned into a mafia and dictate terms to the government. They even fund political parties and influence government policies. With so much money at stake, the managements put pressure on the students, the prize horses, to perform or perish.