Tough English drove IIIT Nuzvid students to suicide?

Ramadevi struggled to understand ‘Learning by Doing’ English course and she was depressed for her failure to complete assignments
Tough English drove IIIT Nuzvid students to suicide?

VIJAYAWADA: While the Nuzvid IIIT management claims that two Pre-University Course (PUC) first year students — Sagireddy Purna Lakshmi Narasimha Murthy and Dabbada Ramadevi — committed suicide this month owing to personal reasons, it was revealed that their fear for English education programme led to the extreme step.The ‘Learning by Doing’ method in English language has became tough for the students who are mostly from rural background.

“English language is killing us. Tasks assigned by lecturers are in American accent and we could not understand it. Lecturers are giving videos of BBC and Fox News and ask us to solve them by hearing,” said first year PUC student K Amar (name changed).With no support from lecturers to overcome the difficulties being faced by students in the English language programme, many students are going into depression.

The case of Ramadevi who committed suicide on October 14, is one such example.In an investigation conducted by Express, it was revealed that Ramadevi had reportedly struggled for a week to understand the language and she was depressed after the lecturers scolded her for not completing the assignments on time.She could not understand the language and pathetically, she did not receive any support from the teaching staff.

“Not even a single faculty member spends extra time for rural students to explain them about the basics. How could they expect the SSC student from a rural background would crack English in one go?” questioned another student Bhadrachalam.It is alleged that the IIIT  management is operating against the primary objective of establishing RGUKT, ie, to provide high quality educational opportunities for rural youth in the State.

According to sources inside the Nuzvid IIIT campus, there is a huge teaching staff crunch and more than 70 per cent of the present staff are below the standards set by Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies (RGUKT).“It’s been more than three weeks since we had an English class. In the name of ‘Learning by Doing’ method, lecturers leave the class after assigning some news videos to students which is all about politics in the USA. Very few can understand the videos. Rest of the students are puzzled with no lecturer coming to their rescue,” said another student on the condition of anonymity.

All is not well under Dasu?

The situation has became worse after Veeranki Venkata Dasu took charge as director of the IIIT in 2016. A few weeks after taking charge, he removed 60 lecturers without showing any reason.  Also, there are rumours that he appointed his close aides though they do not meet the standards set by RGUKT.
 “An RTI plea was filed seeking director’s response on why he sacked them and appointed new people, flouting the RGUKT rules. But, there was no response from the university,” said social activist and lawyer L Sai Babu.

Meanwhile, Nuzvid CI M Ramkumar said five cases were registered in the police station in connection with the IIIT campus after Dasu took charge. “In the case in which 54 students were suspended with the charges of ragging, the IIIT director did not take action against the lecturers who supported them. When it comes to the illegal activities on the IIIT campus, the management is not discussing anything with police,” the CI said.

Don’t put pressure on students, parents told

Vijayawada: Members of Jana Jagarana Samithi have appealed to parents not to force their children in the name of ranks and grades. They were speaking at an  awareness programme for the parents here on Wednesday. Samithi founder A Vasu said that several parents are considering ranks and grades as a prestige issue and forcing their children to study more. Unable to bear the pressure, several students are committing suicides. The parents should allow them to study as per their wish, he added.

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The New Indian Express
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