Suicides in Educational Institutions || Acharya Prashant (2023)
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00:00Hello Acharya ji, I wanted to ask about the recent suicides, multiple suicides which happened
00:09in top institutes of the country which included our institute as well.
00:14So I wanted to know what is the reason behind these suicides which are occurring in the
00:18country and is it due to societal pressure or academic pressure?
00:24You see a kid is a very dependent being, very dependent so the kid is heavily exploited.
00:39You tell the kid that your life is worthless if you do not attain such and such goals and
00:50then you keep the goals so unrealistic and make the competition so severe by telling
01:02the same thing to every kid that practically only 1% can attain the goals they have been
01:13conditioned to attain.
01:15What will happen to the remaining 99%?
01:23One of the most fundamental needs of the mind is to know itself, who am I and why do I exist?
01:33Parents and educators never bother to address this question, let alone answer it satisfactorily.
01:44They did this indirectly, unconsciously, supply you with a readymade and junk answer.
01:52They say you exist to achieve, achieve what?
01:55Stuff that we tell you to achieve.
01:59Who told you that working for some MNC and earning fat dollars is the purpose of life?
02:08Left to yourself, would you have ever come to this conclusion?
02:11Please tell me, any of you?
02:14In fact, left to yourself, most of you would have never bothered to appear for the JEE.
02:23But you have been told that such and such things are non-negotiable.
02:26You need to have these and everybody is telling you the same thing and even that would have
02:35been alright, had you been helped to awaken your own capacity to inquire and know.
02:48If that capacity is awakened, then it does not matter what the entire world is telling
02:54you.
02:58Then you can keep everybody's opinion aside and say, I know on my own, I do not need to
03:04believe because I know.
03:10But the constant bombardment of propaganda is accompanied by an equivalent dehumanization
03:22of consciousness.
03:26Your consciousness is turned mechanical and animal, dehumanized.
03:32So these two things happen in tandem, one, you are told what things are all about, secondly,
03:39you are actively discouraged from knowing on your own.
03:45If you know on your own, then you become some kind of a renegade, unacceptable, an uncontrollable
03:55rebel or something who needs to be straightened.
04:03So now the fellow comes and he has been given impossible targets to achieve and he has been
04:14told if he does not achieve those targets, then life is meaningless.
04:22Some of them buckle, very sadly.
04:28All links in any chain do not carry the same strength, there are weak links.
04:35If you put undue pressure on the ends of the chain, some link will break.
04:42The fault does not belong to the link, you must question those who put the pressure.
04:58Great talent, great talent and what is that talent being told to do?
05:02That talent is being told, you go somewhere and write code, random code.
05:12And if that random code is for one of the top companies, then you are successful.
05:18What success is there in this?
05:22Somebody is being told you go and work in a bank and you just do data all your day.
05:28What success is there in this?
05:30Had you not been being paid those big dollars, would you ever choose this kind of work?
05:36Please tell me.
05:42What success is there in all this?
05:45Somebody is selling shoes after doing computer science B.Tech from IIT Madras.
05:50What success is there in this?
05:53It's just that the company is a footwear giant, MNC footwear giant and then you take pride.
06:08You don't take pride.
06:09Your parents take pride and the entire society takes pride and then a few girls can come
06:20to you or their parents rather.
06:25The fellow is earning, so how about a match?
06:32From all the directions, the message that is coming to you is there is this particular
06:38definition of success and if you cannot measure up to it, then life is not worth living.
06:50Some of our friends unfortunately take it very literally.
06:55They say if life is not worth living, why should we anyway continue living at all?
07:00You could say they are more logical than the rest of us.
07:07Equality has to be fixed.
07:13Everybody who has been continuously teaching you that life exists just for the sake of
07:18material gratification is the culprit.
07:22Catch him.
07:25Justice needs to be done.
07:28Otherwise this kind of trend will continue.
07:29It's not just about your campus.
07:31It's happening everywhere.
07:38Pressure by itself might not be necessarily a bad thing, but pressure for such nonsense?
07:46One fellow gave up his life because his elder brother was a super achiever.
07:52The elder brother was actually from an IIT.
07:53This fellow did not manage into an IIT.
07:56He was at some other place and there too he was not getting the desired kind of job offers.
08:05He quit.
08:07On one hand, I commiserate with the parents.
08:10On the other hand, one needs to have a straight word with them.
08:19What exactly are you feeding your kids on?
08:24Do most parents even deserve to be called parents?
08:29For any small project, you require at least some qualification.
08:36But for the project of raising a kid, you require zero qualification.
08:41All you need is, you know, one night of physical encounter.
08:48And then you say, I am a father and she is a mother and the two of us are qualified to
08:52raise the kid.
08:53How exactly are you qualified to raise the kid?
09:02This is nothing but symptomatic of a society where inner education is considered dispensable.
09:11Where we say that if you teach the student in history, geography, maths, science and
09:19the languages, that is sufficient.
09:22The student does not need to be given education in life, education of the self.
09:28That is not necessary.
09:30If that is not necessary, this will be the outcome and sadly this outcome might keep
09:37getting repeated.
09:41And that inner education, mind you, cannot come just naturally from the family or somewhere.
09:50Just as you require experts, professors to teach you maths and physics, similarly you
09:56require experts to deliver life education.
10:02If that is not there, then the mind will remain very cluttered, very confused and ultimately
10:10sometimes suicidal.
10:15What a wastage!
10:20And what makes the wastage worse is that the lives of those, even those who survive are
10:29rendered waste.
10:31We talked about the fellow who is working in a footwear MNC post his electrical engineering.
10:40Why should that not be considered an equal wastage of life or the fellow who decides
10:48to sell fizzy drinks?
10:52If you look at the IIMs, for example, they attract a lot of crowd from the IITs and what
10:59do these ITNs do passing out from the IIMs?
11:04Somebody is selling fizzy drinks, somebody is selling home loans, that's an equal wastage.
11:17But we don't want to talk of that.
11:18We talk of that as gainful employment.
11:21In fact, we gloat over that.
11:24We say, you know, this is heroic.
11:28My journey has attained a three crore package and that sometimes comes to the newspapers
11:36as well.
11:43That should indeed come to the newspapers as a thing of tragedy, not as a matter of
11:50celebration.