Editorial: Taking self-harm out of the equation

Not a month passes by without a student suicide being reported at one or the other premier educational institution in the country. This month, over the course of two days, two such episodes and an attempted suicide transpired in the IITs.

On February 12, Darshan Solanki, an 18-year-old Dalit student, jumped to his death from his hostel building at IIT-Bombay.

A day later, a 27-year-old student from Maharashtra hanged himself from the ceiling fan in his room at IIT-Madras.

That day, another student from the same institution overdosed on sleeping pills but was rescued in time. Reports of self-harm among students in Kota, Rajasthan, have also grabbed headlines. Four IIT aspirants died by suicide in Dec 2022, three of them on the same day, Dec 11. By the government’s own admission, no less than 122 student suicides have occurred in India’s IITs, IIMs and other premier educational institutions during the period 2014-2021. Last year, 15 IIT aspirants, all aged 16-18, took their lives in Kota alone.

The government and the institutions may claim being sensitive to these episodes, but their response has been inadequate. Almost all of them have made helplines and counselling available to vulnerable students. Initiatives like peer-assisted learning, mother language based-instruction and induction programmes have also been introduced. But have we conducted a performance audit of such initiatives? Are de-stressing programmes like extracurricular counselling, sports, cultural activities, peer monitoring enough to solve the problem? Can the faculty detect mental distress in one student in a class of 200?

This response is patently inadequate since all these measures address the suicide issue only at the point of occurrence, and not within a larger periphery where the roots of the problem lie and where there may be opportunities for prevention. Why must we, for instance, focus all our counselling efforts upon vulnerable students alone? Why not counsel all students on suicide-relevant issues like mental health, caste and faith-based prejudice? Why not train faculty to self-detect invisible prejudices within themselves? Why not intervene to make campus culture more inclusive, reflective of Dalit and minority nuances? Coaching centres must be subjected to the same regulations applicable to other educational institutions. One might even argue that hostels should be opened up to health and sanitation inspections.

Suicides in the 15-25 age group are a particularly complex issue, often prompted by social, physical and academic pressures. Add to this, the unrealistic expectations we subject youngsters to, in their teen years. Add the all-pervasive spectre of caste discrimination, and it’s a frightening cocktail of factors that can drive a young spirit over the edge. It must be said that this is not a problem one can solve without making deep and radical changes to our education system and everyday culture.

To start with, we need more granular data on suicides rates prevalent among adolescent, teen and young adults. It’s a pity we still rely on under-reported and undifferentiated statistics provided by the National Crime Records Bureau to design our policy on youth suicide. NCRB’s numbers on suicide are reportedly 37% lower than actual. The issue of campus suicides cannot be addressed without a broad-based, multi-disciplinary and long-term study. Counsellors and fact-finding teams alone cannot be relied upon to comprehend such metrics. The IITs should commission a study across its campuses and acknowledge that caste and faith-based prejudice exists here, insidious and invisible even to the most sympathetic eye of privilege.