Friday's suicide by S Anitha, the 17-year-old Scheduled Caste girl from Ariyalur district following denial of admission to MBBS course because of poor scores in the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) resulted in widespread protests in the district and elsewhere in Tamil Nadu on Saturday.
Tamil-chauvinist elements like Naam Tamilar Katchi, Dravidar Kazhakam and VCK took to the streets from early Saturday morning bringing vehicular movement to a standstill. The agitators were joined by the leaders and activists of the CPI(M), the CPI and other fringe elements of the left with slogans against the Centre and State Governments for their refusal to make Tamil Nadu free from NEET. What stood out in these demonstrations was anti-the India rhetoric. The activists, who led the Marina Beach agitation demanding end to ban on Jallikkattu during December 2016, were leading Saturday's protest marches from the front.
Anitha, who had scored 1,176 out of 1,200 marks in the Class XII State Board Examination, could manage only 86 out of 720 marks in NEET. Had the MBBS admission been held based on the marks she scored in the State Board Examination, Anitha would have walked away with an admission card to one of the leading medical colleges in Chennai itself. But the NEET syllabus turned out to be her nemesis.
Anitha was one among the many students from Tamil Nadu who had approached the Madras High Court and the Supreme Court with a plea to exempt the students of the State Board from the ambit of the NEET. The plea was dismissed by both the courts which ruled that there was no justification for such a plea.
The Tamil Nadu Government was given a one-time exemption from NEET for the academic year 2016-2017 on the condition that the State Government would make the State Board Examination compatible with the syllabus of the common entrance test. But instead of following the court directive, the AIADMK-led Government was trying to get exemption for the State from NEET while all the remaining States in the country opted for the NEET.
Anitha was offered a seat in aeronautical engineering at the elite Madras Institute of Technology, the alma mater of APJ Abdul Kalam, the former President of India based on her marks in the 12th standard. She was also offered a seat in the Bachelor of Veterinary Science course in the veterinary college at Orathanadu. But the youngster had set her eyes on the MBBS course and did not accept the invitation from MIT and the veterinary college.
Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami, who expressed shock over the suicide of Anitha, declared a financial assistance of Rs 7 lakh to her family. School Education Minister KA Sengottaiyan declared that there would not be any more suicides by students as the State Government has launched a mega scheme to train the State Board Students to face the NEET.
Dr lakshmi Vijayakuar, founder, Sneha, an organisation working 24X7 for suicide prevention, told The Pioneer that it was a stupid action by a bright girl. "The fact that she had no one to counsel or guide her could be the main reason for her decision to resort to the extreme step. Anitha had lost her mother when she was hardly four or five. Had there been someone close to her who could make her understand that MBBS itself was not the end of life, she would not have done this," said Dr Vijayakumar.
Interestingly, the tug of war between the two AIADMK factions was what which stood out in Saturday's protests. Jaya TV, hitherto considered as the mouthpiece of the AIADMK, lambasted the Palaniswami Government for its indifference to the stance of late Jayalalithaa that the State should get exemption from NEET. "The fact that this Government was not serious in getting the exemption from NEET proves once again that the Government has lost the moral responsibility to rule," said the anchor person of Jaya Plus news channel.