The Joint Engineering Examination Mains 2016 results were out on April 27, 2016. Those who couldn’t make it to the JEE Advanced exam, fretted and fumed, and sadly one aspirant killed herself. And that girl’s score wasn’t even so bad that she could not have made it to a decent engineering college. Another young life was nipped in the bud. Her untimely death came as a shocker, and started another round of the debate on who is responsible for it?

PaGaLGuY spoke to a cross section of people, aspirants like her, parents, friends as in peer group and coaching institutes. Parents were quite sure that they do “not” pressurise their wards. “My son always wanted to become an engineer, so I only encouraged him,” said a parent of an aspirant. Another said that their family constituted of only engineers and academicians, so it was natural for their son to choose the same career path. For another family, engineering is the basic degree to grab. “After the degree, let her do what she wants,” said the mother, adding “she is good in Maths, and it makes sense that she opts for engineering.”

It’s a mad house in places like Kota and Hyderabad where most engineering coaching institutes are situated. Visit those cities during admission time and you will witness the chaos and mayhem. Parents, grandparents, agents, students thronging institute gates, there is noise and commotion all over the place… The clamour to secure a seat is quite sickening, so to speak.

Some families even displace themselves during their child’s ‘coaching years.’ They travel bag, baggage, food, servant and pet to the coaching hubs. One doctor parent started her practice in Kota as she thought it was a good idea to shift with her son during his coaching years.

That’s just the tip of the pressure point.

Once the student’s admission process is over, the coaching institutes begin to jiggle. Thankfully, a few admitted that a ‘competitive’ environment was created in the Institute to goad students to do better. “The training that we provide is intense and to the point. We expect students to match up because becoming an engineer is not easy,” said a professor of one such coaching centre.

Another faculty member said that if students are honest in their preparations and complete their weekly assignments on time, then there’s no pressure at all. “Pressure is created when students do not meet deadlines or expectations. Some set unreal expectations for themselves.”

Engineering coaching years seem only a little less regimented than that of what the common man knows about the Army. Students wake up before sunrise and sleep after sunset. An average day is packed to capacity with so many must-dos – eat, study, revise, finish homework, lunch, bathe, breakfast and also do everything else in between – to take you closer to your destination, a seat at one of the IITs or ISM.

And so, friends made during coaching years become a dear lot. Sadly, these friends have a bit of play in the rigmarole too. A group of students, who take coaching from the same institute and live in the same hostel in Kota said that while there is no visible competition amongst them, at some point they want to do better than the other. “We study together and know each others’ weaknesses and strengths. While we do hope that all of us do well, it is natural that some will fare better than the other. That unsaid competition between peers is sometimes stressful,” said a candidate.

The parents, coaching institutes and friends/peers – all of them have washed their hands of the death of this 17-year-old – who jumped to death from her hostel building in Kota. At the end, everyone will blame the education system and how rote learning, its mainstay, is the genesis of it all.

But the fact is that it all these characters have a part in this tragedy and not to forget the student, who finds himself torn between what he/she wants to do, can do and is made to do. Today, it is no more about passing or failing an exam – it is all about doing well and really well. Frankly, an IIT degree is indeed a coveted one, but certainly not so prized to give away one’s life. It’s a foolish trade-off.