Kota institutes may get peer group evaluation to prevent suicides

KOTA: Coaching institutes in Kota have been asked to adopt ‘Peer Group Evaluation Methodology’ to identify distressed students and prevent them from taking extreme steps.

As per the methodology, 15-20 students would be formed into a group, where they can vent out their feelings and identify those distressed. The move comes as the city witnessed 16 suicides among aspirants in the last year.

Kota district collector Dr Ravi Kumar Surpur said students would first introduce themselves in the group, after which every member would be rated by the rest on his/her general disposition towards life. Each person would be marked as to whether he/she is cheerful, friendly, silent, talkative, happy, studious, serious, emotional or withdrawn. Students would be encouraged to talk about chronic absenteeism, hyper-expectations from parents, lack of interest, poor concentration, erratic sleep habits, mobile phone overindulgence, low self esteem, and other negative tendencies, under the guidance of patrons.

Issues like eve-teasing, exploitation, poor service conditions, breach of contract and others too may come out during such interactions, Surpur said.

The groups would meet after periodic intervals of 10-15 days and discuss about what they went through during those days.

Subsequently, deviant behaviours would be identified so that corrective action can be taken up by authorities and the students concerned.