| Author | Message | ||
     Esperanza Mudiripoyina Bewarse Username: Esperanza Post Number: 22165 Registered: 08-2004 Posted From: 91.152.96.187 Rating: N/A |
ONE WORRYING aspect of this politics of suicide is the predominance of students who have succumbed to it. On 19 February 2010, Venugopal Reddy, a 19-year-old student of a private college on Hyderabad’s outskirts, was found charred beyond recognition behind an auditorium of the OU. Soon after, the nation was shocked by visuals of a youngster ablaze outside the university gates. Yadaiah, an orphan who worked at a local restaurant to fund his own education, was neither a student of OU nor associated with any political party. Once his self-immolation was aired live on TV, politicians of every colour scrambled to brand it a Telangana suicide. However, many photojournalists who were present near Yadaiah recall he was shouting, “Save me, please save me” rather than “Jai Telangana”, as the TRS claimed. Students from Telangana are often the first in their families to reach college and have a steely resolve to succeed. Take Meegada Sai Kumar, son of a marginal farmer and a second year chemical engineering student, who was paying his way through college by giving private maths tuitions. He hanged himself to death on 7 November 2010. “Kumar was frustrated that exams were not being postponed despite a shutdown of classes at OU, and feared he would fail because of the time he lost participating in the Telangana movement,” says Kumar’s close friend. space for lease |