The recent declaration of board exam results from across the country has brought intense joy and disappointment to scores of families. Tragically, for an 18-year-old student from Raigarh, Chhattisgarh, the disappointment of failing his board exams resulted in suicide. According to reports, he had failed his board exams last year as well.
Anguished by the news of suicide, a 2009-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) Officer Awanish Kumar Sharan, who is currently the District Magistrate of Kabirdham district, Chhattisgarh, took to Facebook asking students “not to get disheartened or lose hope” on getting poor results.
News of the suicide had evidently touched a personal chord.
“Today I read a shocking [piece of] news in [a] newspaper that one student committed suicide because of unexpected result in the exam. I appeal to all students and their parents not to take the result very seriously! It’s just a number game. You will get many more chances to prove your calibre,” he wrote on Facebook.
Going beyond simple advice, the IAS officer also posted the results he had obtained in his Class 10 and 12 board exams, college and other educational qualifications.
Scoring 44.5 per cent and 65 per cent marks in Class 10 and 12 respectively, besides obtaining 60.7 per cent in his graduation, Awanish made it clear that despite these apparent setbacks, he continued to persevere. With determination, persistence, an objective analysis of the predicament in which he found himself and hope, he willed his way towards clearing the notoriously difficult Union Public Service Commission exams.
Today, he is an IAS officer.
The IAS officer’s message on social media was intended to assist those students suffering from depression, anxiety and stress as a consequence of poor marks obtained in the Chhattisgarh Board of Secondary Exam declared on May 11 besides those of CBSE and ICSE announced last week. The objective of this decision was clear—bolster the confidence of students suffering from abject disappointment after the declaration of board exam results in this ultra-competitive age and to tell them that it isn’t the end of the world.
The message was also directed at their parents and other family members as well. On occasions, the weight of expectation they put on a child is what results in him/her taking the extreme step if they perform poorly in board exams.
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“Today choices are not limited, and opportunities will keep coming as long as the students endeavour to persist with their mission. Why let the school percentage decide the future. They should soon get over it as exam results are not the end of the world,” said the Collector, who is a native of Bihar, while speaking to The New Indian Express.
(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)
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