IIT Kharagpur is working on teaching students how to manage academic demands alongside the growing pressure of internships — drawing lessons from a spate of student suicides on campus.
A senior official acknowledged that students were becoming increasingly focused on building their CVs through internships, alongside academics, exposing themselves to “artificial pressure”.
“In some cases, students are working on internships at home during their summer break — often arranged by their parents. If this artificial pressure builds up, it can trigger an outburst,” the official said.
On Friday morning, Ritam Mondal, 21, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student, was found hanging in his room at the Rajendra Prasad Hall of Residence on the IIT campus. The reason behind his death is still unknown.
“We encourage early internships, but we must evaluate whether students are placing excessive emphasis on them. It is increasingly becoming clear that we need to guide them in handling both academic and internship pressure simultaneously,” said IIT Kharagpur director Suman Chakraborty.
“They should not succumb to artificial pressure,” he added.
Chakraborty admitted that four student deaths in the last seven months could make parents wary of sending their children to IIT Kharagpur.
After meeting Ritam’s grieving parents on campus Friday evening, the director said the father urged him to act swiftly. “He told me to take the steps at the earliest,” Chakraborty said.
The induction of new BTech students is just a week away.
“If we cannot prevent deaths, parents will fear sending their sons and daughters to the campus. We are building peer groups to reach students more effectively. We need to pass on the message that they must know how to handle both academic and internship pressures,” Chakraborty told The Telegraph.
“They don’t need to overload their CVs with internships to the point of breaking. That kind of pressure won’t help when they face real-world work,” said Chakraborty, who teaches in the mechanical engineering department.
Earlier this year, on January 12, Shaon Malik, a third-year electrical engineering student, was found hanging in his hostel room on the campus. On April 20, Aniket Walkar, a final-year student of ocean engineering from Maharashtra, was found hanging in his room at JC Bose Hall. On May 4, Md. Asif Qamar, third-year BTech student from Bihar, found dead in his room at the Madan Mohan Malviya Hall.
Speaking on the eve of the institute’s annual convocation on Monday, director Chakraborty stressed the urgency of understanding why students were in such distress.
“If we can detect and resolve the root causes by engaging with them — through a system combining technical intervention with a humane approach — we may be able to reduce these tragedies,” he had said.