A scrutiny has been prompted by the death of IIT-B student Sahil Wakode
Mehboobani, who graduated in 2018 and is now a senior consultant in Pune, said master’s dissertation projects were allotted according to GPA rather than students’ interests. TOI had reported last month that only 11% of IIT faculty were from reserved categories.
Former and current IIT students told TOI that the help they received could depend on who was on the other side of the desk, within a culture of pressure that shapes students and faculty alike. He said when he struggled with the fundamentals of his assigned topic, a professor objected to being given a “weak student”. Aditya, a senior software engineer at Meta who graduated from IIT-Kharagpur in 2019, said he felt “intense shame about not being ‘smart’ enough” when he ranked around the middle of his class. An IIT professor, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said students arrive carrying the pressure of years of intense competition, which worsens during examinations. The professor, however, said IITs needed to do more to address students’ psychological needs. Ramachandran said requests for assignment extensions, grace marks to cross a passing grade or leeway on attendance could make students feel they were asking for personal favours. “The professor would be seated and would make you stand and write a letter of apology, while they made sarcastic statements about how you were useless,” he said. “Professors have all the power in the system; each issue is decided on a case-to-case basis,” the student said. Another student, they recalled, changed supervisors relatively easily because a professor backed them, “whereas I had to run from pillar to post, pleading at every turn”. A first-generation learner at IIT-Bombay, who grew up in a village and studied largely in a vernacular-medium school, said access had widened without a corresponding change in faculty backgrounds and assumptions. “However, IIT professors still largely come from privileged sections,” she said.
Their accounts come as IIT-Bombay faces scrutiny over its handling of students under academic and disciplinary stress following the death of student Sahil Wakode. Eventually, Mehboobani was left without a guide and had to repeat a year despite having no courses pending. There is also the adjustment of moving from being a high-performing school student to being one among hundreds of equally accomplished peers. He later completed a master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Counselling services are available across IIT campuses. IIT-Bombay’s Student Wellness Centre offers individual counselling, group therapy, mindfulness workshops, peer support and other wellness programmes. An IIT-Bombay postgraduate student described trying to change PhD supervisors as particularly difficult. Students from backgrounds less represented in the system face another set of challenges.