Highest exam related suicides in cities

However, Govt maintains no record of the suicides, MoS for HRD MAA Fatmi tells LS, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Dec 5, 2006, 16:14:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Even as government maintains no record of suicide of students, the Minister of State for HRD MAA Fatmi told the Lok Sabha that most number of exam related suicides take place in the cities. Eight cases of exam related suicides were reported this year as compared to four last year.

While replying to a series of questions, Fatmi admitted that stress on students in cities was much more and the maximum number of suicides reported are of class X and class XII students. "It may be because of exam fear or fear of poor performance. But, the ministry has done no study on exam related suicides," he said.

Pointing at the number of steps taken to reduce stress of school students, Fatmi said, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has been continuously working to make learning a more comfortable process. "In Maths and Social Sciences, 20 per cent of marks are through internal assessment and in case of Sciences it has been increased to 40 per cent. Also, fifteen minutes is exclusively given to students to read the question paper and three hours are given to answer the paper meant for reply in two-and-a-half hours," he said.

He also informed that helplines have been launched and changes are being made in the question papers to reduce the stress. "Recently, NCERT approved a new National Curriculum Framework (NCF) to make the syllabus easier and reduce the burden of schoolbag," he said.

Fatmi also listed out eight major steps including simpler question papers and publication of sample question papers taken by CBSE to reduce stress among students.

Email Chetan Chauhan: chetan @hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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