In India IIT’s are looked upon as the beacon of excellence, the triumph of hope, the sacrosanct temples of science and technology. Every year more than 5 lakh aspirants coerce to get in these temples, but after rigorous preparation of years, decision is based on one six hour examination i.e IIT-JEE, perhaps the only exam where first you have to clear tests to get paid coaching to prepare for the exam. If you crack JEE, you are pundit of the temple and rest all are untouchables.
Nobody cares about the mass that missed IIT by few marks, no matter 5 or 2, you are just not selected. Everyone talks about toppers, but where are the pupils who also fought to get in, no one cares about them. Students renounce their homes just after passing 10th class to get into IITs, their parents invest huge amount of money to see their child hitting the clout, laden with hopes and aspirations, one starts preparing for that day. All sports, fun and the frolics are relics. He is alienated from the outer world. Some of the students pre-realize that IIT is not their game. Some of them don’t even know why they want to be an engineer? Why is getting that tag so important for them? Leaving these doubts safe in their brains many keep on fighting. Two percent of them make it and others confront their first rejection. This saga is true for any other examination but what’s so special about IIT-JEE? What makes it different? What makes it so sacred?
One of the major reasons that I feel behind considering this exam so tough is that the quality of the aspirants and the complexity of coaching, the mental agitation one goes through while preparing for it. More importantly, they don’t even test you much on your knowledge, you may have all the knowledge about a reaction of chemistry, its usage, its process and all other various parameters but what they demand from you is aptitude, you can be a professor of that subject but you still can be wrong while solving that question in limited time. The average age of the aspirants is just 18, this major setback at 18, leaves student bereft of hope and his faith in hard work is completely shattered. Many take this as the end of life. There is no research or data available about the no. of people who commit suicide after JEE. Many require years to come out of the depression and some of them even develop a sub-conscious fear of fighting competition. Killing a potential talent at the age 18, isn’t it a crime? Who are the culprits? IITs? Coaching factories? Parents? Society? Who is to blame? Whoever it may be, but before we decide, we already lost a talented chap.
Those of who don’t commit suicide are vulnerable to smoking and crapulence. Self esteems are at new low. The cases of delirium and hidden phobias are innumerable. Sometimes I wonder how can one single exam, one single day, exactly not even a day, just six hours decide so much of someone’s life. Why put so much pressure on everyone? Pressurized students, pressurized parents, teachers, siblings, so much of hoopla over an exam in the nation where 35 % of the population is not able to read and write.
The major concern should not be method of intake but it should be on incremental value of IITs. What they add to the student? Concern should be pedagogy post JEE not pre JEE. An institute is not known by its bachelor’s degree but from the quality of post graduation and research inside it. M.tech and M.S students are least talked about, while they are the real backbones. When you actually try to search IITs on the world level, we are nowhere as compared to the premier world level institutes. We only take pride in the fact that we select one out of hundred. Come on!! We are not even sure that we did it rightly or not?
Success stories that allure almost everyone are even apocryphal. Only few get lucrative packages and the rest of them settle down on an average job. I don’t want to question sanctity of IITs but just want to broach the point that IITs are not the end of life. As said by Robert frost “Life goes on”, things definitely go wrong, many times you feel dejected, rejected and forsaken but nothing marks the end of life and whatever you call it JEE or ISEET, it’s not going to be an exception.
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