Lucknow:
Vijay Singh, 16, shot himself in the head with his father's gun. He had been suspended from school, allegedly for speaking up against physical punishment by a teacher.
"He had become depressed. There was no school to go to.," explains his father Shriram Yadav.
Medical student Sushil Chowdhary drank poison after failing his exams twice. "He used to say that the college administration would fail him because he's a Dalit," says Sushil's father D N Choudhary.
Vijay and Sushil are just two of the 31 suicides reported in Lucknow over the last two weeks. Many of the victims are students, which has forced the Centre to take notice.
"I will eradicate the marking system. It will ease pressure on children, because they will only be graded," says HRD Minister Kapil Sibal.
Perhaps the biggest change needs to come from within us - among parents who live their dreams through their children, and among children who have been brought up to want to live impossibly high dreams.