A week ago, a 31-year-old masters student at IIT-Delhi died by suicide. The incident — the eighth such death of a student in the institute in three years — has ignited unprecedented protests on a campus where stirs are uncommon and pupils are involved in breakneck academic pursuits; students are demanding the resignation of some senior office bearers and professors, a transparent probe, and compensation. In response, the IIT has inducted students into the panel looking into the issue, and announced measures such as curricular flexibility, more mentorship, mental health care infrastructure, greater support and more diversity, inclusion and bias sensitisation that it hopes can ameliorate the problem.
A Supreme Court-appointed National Task Force termed student suicides an “epidemic” earlier this year. It found 65% HEIs have no access to mental health service providers, 73% lack full-time mental health professionals, and fewer than 4% conduct suicide-risk assessment. (PTI)
They won’t be enough. At the heart of this crisis that has engulfed Indian educational campuses — especially its prestigious higher education institutions (HEIs) — is a toxic cocktail of widespread discrimination meted out by students and teachers, weak institutional grievance redressal mechanisms, and the misplaced but closely held belief that creating structures to level the playing field are antithetical to merit. Unless the government and academic leadership show will and intent — both have been in short supply — to uproot such attitudes, inquiry panels can only deliver piecemeal solutions that act as patchwork salves, not life-saving medicine.
The grim story has repeated itself over and over. Students, many of whom come from marginalised backgrounds and castes, find that after years at coaching institute cubbyholes and achieving their goal of landing at one of India’s premier institutions, their struggle begins all over again. For some, it is the medium of instruction; for some, socialisation and related isolation; for some, structural discrimination they find difficult to counter; and for some, it is the sheer academic pressure — further complicated by the overwhelming aspirations of their families, for whom the student represents the only shot at economic and social mobility in a country where such ladders are few.
Government data bears this out. The number of student suicides in India climbed to a record high of 14,488 in 2024, marking a 4.3% rise from 13,892 cases in 2023 even as overall suicides declined marginally by 0.4% from 171,418 to 170,746 during the same period, according to the latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau. While overall suicides in 2024 rose 11.6% over five years and 27.8% over 10 years, student suicides grew at a sharper pace, rising 15.7% in five years and 62.2% over 10 years. It is not like the problem is not known. A Supreme Court-appointed National Task Force termed student suicides an “epidemic” earlier this year. It found 65% HEIs have no access to mental health service providers, 73% lack full-time mental health professionals, and fewer than 4% conduct suicide-risk assessment. Almost half of the HEIs had not conducted faculty sensitisation workshops in the 18 months the panel took to finalise its interim report.
But if little has changed, it must be attributed to lack of genuine intent to move the needle. If the government and institutional leadership feel that academic excellence can be divorced from student well-being, they are wrong. If young people are being driven to extreme steps because they find their institutions too hostile, it is a blot on our democracy. A course correction is urgent. Plenty of road maps exist — from dedicated bridge courses and flexibility in medium of instruction to functional SC/ST cells, robust mental health support that’s not only on paper, and diversity initiatives beyond glossy pamphlet photographs. But to initiate change, the problem has to be taken seriously, and not treated as an irritant. Unfortunately, leadership at every level is guilty of doing just that.
