MUMBAI: As events at IIT Bombay’s Powai campus have unfolded following the death by suicide of second-year student Sahil Wakode, educationists across the country say they have been disturbed not only by the tragedy, but also by what they describe as “several versions of the truth” emerging in its aftermath.Heads and senior faculty members from several IITs said emotions understandably run high after the loss of a young life. But they also pointed out that institutions have established protocols for dealing with such incidents and, based on what they had learnt from colleagues at IIT Bombay, these appeared to have been followed.There was also unease among faculty over the manner in which Prof Suryanarayana Doolla came under scrutiny.“In all such incidents, truth becomes the biggest casualty,” said the director of an IIT, adding that while faculty members empathised with Doolla being made the “fall guy”, the pressures faced by IIT students often extended well beyond the classroom and the institute.Another IIT director said disciplinary processes at IITs were rarely mechanical or uniformly punitive.“Most IITs, like IIT Bombay, do not have a flat punitive policy. Students are given a chance to present their case,” the director said. “At the same time, a faculty member, like a parent, may reprimand a student found breaking rules such as cheating. That by itself cannot be construed as a casteist slur.”The larger question, faculty members said, was how institutions could uphold academic standards while ensuring that students in moments of acute distress received adequate support.The IIT Madras Faculty Association, in a statement, called for the inquiry to examine whether procedures for dealing with academic malpractice provided students sufficient “support, counselling and safeguards at moments of acute stress”, so that such situations could be handled with “both integrity and compassion”.An IIT Bombay faculty member said caste had repeatedly entered the discourse following several campus tragedies, making already complex situations even more sensitive. “It is a sensitive issue, but this is a larger societal thread that an IIT alone cannot solve,” the faculty member said. “Our colleagues have told us that all laid-down protocols were followed, including informing the head of the department. But there has been an imbalance in the way the situation has been handled. If student wellbeing is conflated with assessment and evaluation, how do we conduct a test?”Even as that debate continues, campuses elsewhere have begun reaching out directly to students. With mid-semester examinations underway at several IITs, directors have sent messages reminding students that an examination is only one moment in a much longer academic journey.At IIT Kharagpur, director Prof Suman Chakraborty told students: “An exam measures what you wrote on one day. It does not measure who you are or what you will become.” His message ended simply: “Trust your preparation. Breathe. Take one question at a time.”
