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The Telegraph reported on July 26 that the director of IIT Kharagpur, addressing a meeting of parents in the context of repeated cases of suicide among students, has requested them not to put unbearable expectational pressure of a material sort on their wards - forget about Rs. 1-crore starting salary packages, he has urged them, face reality. See the above picture.
I am glad that he has pointed out the case of Sundar Pichai, and added that Pichai studied metallurgical engineering at IIT (followed by an MBA, which does NOT call for a prior engineering degree). I should like to stress here that Pichai's case well illustrates the fact that to become the CEO of a giant IT company, you do not need even a degree in IT or computer science. Digest that, ignorant parents and starry-eyed youngsters!
I only wish the learned director had spoken out loudly about how so many colleges (and plus-two level tutors/cram shops) are duping both parents and children with fairy tales about those multi-crore salary packages. They are just pie in the sky, folks, and, even if they exist, your chances of landing one of them are about just as good as winning a major lottery or becoming an IPL team captain. Look at your parents' earnings, kids, even after working for 20 to 30 years. Also ask them how many people they know who get salaries of crores a year (and have your parents actually seen the pay-slips of those who claim they do, or are they gullible enough to believe everyone who claims they do?). Then learn to live with the drab, humble reality. Otherwise, the bodies are simply going to pile up higher, as rosy dreams are shattered by the time you have spent one or two years in college, and you have found out how hard it is to live and work and thrive in the real world, and your 'mental health' cannot bear the terrible shock of the sudden let-down after so many years of fantasizing.
Ironic that I, who have warned thousands of kids merely against such suicidal daydreaming, have managed to earn a reputation in my town as the tutor who is a bad man because he urges his students against such greed and stupidity, whether it is theirs or their parents'! But of course, my karma is being recorded at a far higher level than the public's, and I am content.
Right now, you can find the news item if you click on this link, but I don't know how long they maintain them in their archives.
4 comments:
Dear Sir,
I believe it is high time that someone at the top—like the director of IIT Kharagpur—spoke out. But I can’t help wondering how many more young lives might have been saved if more people had listened earlier to teachers like you, who saw the storm coming long before the flood.
We should have paid more attention when you told us, half-jokingly but wholly seriously, “An honest job that pays 30k with dignity will give you more peace than a 30L job earned with borrowed ethics, borrowed dreams, and borrowed sleep.”
And now that we’ve grown up, we can finally see: the strength of a good teacher doesn’t lie in his popularity, but in his refusal to pander to illusions.
So thank you, Sir,
But here’s the question we must all now face, as teachers, students, and society alike: In a world so desperate to chase a fantasy, who will have the courage to speak the truth before the next dream turns deadly?
Warm regards,
Rudra Bhaskar.
Well, there will be always voices like mine crying in the wilderness :)
Dear Suvroda
In India, the middle class often regarded individuals as successful primarily based on the size of their pay packages. IIT and IIM have traditionally been viewed as essential pathways to achieving this status.
Today in India, few people want to call themselves middle-class, especially in cities – so I can imagine the trauma their kids must be going through.
Regards
Tanmoy
What the IIT Kharagpur director has said is important, but it also exposes a deeper problem that goes far beyond individual parents or students. Every society defines its own metrics of “success,” and those metrics have changed—unfortunately, not always for the better.
There was a time when accomplishment was measured largely in terms of character: honesty, integrity, competence, reliability, and a sense of purpose. Economic stability mattered, of course, but it was not the sole or even the primary yardstick. Today, success has been reduced to crude numerical symbols—salary figures, brand names, fame, and public posturing. Money has become not just a means of living, but a moral credential. In such an atmosphere, hypocrisy thrives, and quiet, honest lives are treated as failures.
Educational institutions, including IITs and similar elite institutes, cannot wash their hands of responsibility here. For years, placement packages have been aggressively advertised, selectively highlighted, and fed to the media with great enthusiasm. Institutes know very well that a handful of extreme outliers—international offers, stock-heavy compensation, or one-off roles—are presented as if they were representative outcomes. If these institutions truly wished to temper unrealistic expectations, they could easily do so: by withholding sensationalised figures, by publishing median and long-term career data instead of peak salaries, and by clearly stating how rare such offers actually are. The fact that this is rarely done suggests that the hype serves institutional branding too well to be abandoned.
The same distortion trickles down to coaching centres and plus-two “training factories,” which sell dreams rather than education. They monetise aspiration by turning statistical anomalies into marketing promises. Parents and students, often unfamiliar with how careers actually unfold over decades, are encouraged to believe that a single exam or degree guarantees instant wealth. When reality asserts itself—as it inevitably does—the psychological shock can be devastating.
If society insists on measuring human worth primarily through money and visibility, then disappointment is not an accident; it is built into the system. Unless we collectively recalibrate our understanding of success—towards meaningful work, personal dignity, and realistic expectations—we will continue to see young people crushed by dreams that were never theirs to begin with, but were sold to them very profitably by others.
Speaking uncomfortable truths may earn social hostility, but it is far better than participating in a collective lie whose costs are paid by the young.
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