IIT-Guwahati
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Rancho, Farhan, and Raju fly the drone near the hostel room window only to find that Joy Lobo, who wanted to make the unmanned aerial vehicle mounted with wireless cameras, has hanged himself from the ceiling fan. Viru Sahasrabuddhe, the director of the engineering college, had dismissed his project as ‘impractical’ and turned down his request for more time to make the drone. Joy could not take the pressure and ended his life, writing on the wall of his room: “I quit”.
The heart-wrenching scene in the 2009 blockbuster 3 Idiots, which had Amir Khan in the lead role, is not far from reality. India’s premier tech schools are often hit by the real-life versions of the tragedy that Rajkumar Hirani wove into the coming-of-age comedy-drama.
Take the case of Bimlesh Kumar, a third-year B Tech (Computer Science and Engineering) student at the Indian Institute of Technology in Guwahati. His body was found hanging from the ceiling fan of his hostel room on September 9. The police investigation suggested that he had died by suicide although his family at Balia in Uttar Pradesh remained clueless about why he had taken the extreme step. His death triggered a protest by students. One of the protesters said on condition of anonymity that Bimlesh had not been keeping well and, as a result, his attendance had dropped below 75 per cent and that was why the 21-year-old had not been allowed to register for the placement interview scheduled to take place next month.
Bimlesh’s was the third suicide at the IIT Guwahati. Soumya, a second-year M Tech student, also ended her life last month. The 24-year-old too had received a job offer after a successful internship, but it had been allegedly revoked due to low attendance. The back-to-back incidents prompted students to demand a 10 per cent to 15 per cent relaxation in the attendance criteria.
The series of suicides in IIT Guwahati in 2024 started with Sourabh Kumar, 20, a First-Year B Tech student, who had taken the extreme step on April 10.
Not only the IIT Guwahati but two students of the IIT Kanpur also died by suicide this year. So did one each in IIT Roorkee, IIT (BHU) Varanasi, IIT Kharagpur, and IIT Delhi.
The 2024, which saw nine suicides on the IIT campuses in nine months, is not an exception though. The data obtained by Dheeraj Singh, the founder of the Global IIT Alumni Support Group, through RTI queries revealed that the IITs had witnessed 127 suicides between 2005 and 2024.
The IIT Madras recorded the highest number touching 26, IIT Kanpur 18, IIT Kharagpur 14, IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi 10 each, and IIT Guwahati 13.
According to the response to the RTI query filed by another activist Dr Vivek Pandey, one student of IIT Dharwad committed suicide in in 2020-21.
According to Education Ministry data, at least 33 student suicides were reported from IITs in the period between January 2018 to March 2023.
IC3, a volunteer-based organisation that provides support to high schools, prepared a report that says while overall suicide numbers have increased by 2 per cent annually, student suicide cases have surged by 4% despite likely “underreporting” of student suicide cases.
An internal survey by an IIT student organisation reveals that a whopping 61 per cent of students say that academic stress is one of the main factors for taking such an extreme step. 12 per cent talked of job insecurity, 10 per cent had family issues and 6 per cent complained of harassment.
“Student suicides in IITs is a serious problem. Earlier we used to get news of the suicide of an IIT student in four months, now it is like once every month. To arrest this trend, other than encouraging peer mentorship, academic freedom is most important so that academic stress is minimised,” Singh, an alumnus of the IIT Kanpur, said.
“Internal committees which inquire into deaths often give clean chits to themselves. If a child has been performing poorly, they blame his academic credentials, if the child is doing well academically, they put the blame squarely on relationship issues. The same playbook inquiry procedure repeats across all IITs. The government should set up a centralised commission of inquiry comprising independent experts comprising psychiatrists, psychologists, legal people, social activists, and police to probe past suicide incidents. No IIT directors or professors should be on the commission, It is important to fix accountability in the IIT system and recommend remedial steps to the IIT Council to prevent the emerging mental health crisis in the premier institutes,” said Singh.
IIT Delhi has also seen at least three suicides in the recent past. On February 15 this year, Varad Sanjay Nerkar, a second year M Tech student of IIT Delhi, committed suicide with his parents pointing fingers at his guide, who said that he had been under immense pressure for the last two months.
Ayush Asna, a fourth-year B Tech student of the Maths and Computing department of IIT Delhi killed himself on July 14 in 2023. While Anil Kumar from the same department and same IIT, hailing from an economically disadvantaged background, committed suicide on 31 August 2023. Both belonged to the SC community.
As per another RTI filed by Singh, no FIR has been lodged in at least eight cases although inquest proceedings were conducted in each case. However, the Supreme Court on September 20, 2024 issued notice on a plea filed by parents of both Ayush and Anil and who have sought registration of FIR and independent investigation into the deaths by a centralised agency.
Sachin Kumar Jain, 32, a PhD student at IIT Madras had ended his life on March 23, 2023. Following this, his PhD supervisor Prof Ashish Sen was suspended after an inquiry committee report.
As per his analysis of 116 suicides in 18 engineering colleges, including 10 IITs, 1 IISc, 5 NITS, and two private colleges, he found that out of 18 colleges as per the World Health Organisation recommended Suicide Death Rate (SDR), SDRs in IITs was 11, in NITs 6 and private colleges 2. The data shows that of all analysed colleges - public institutions IITs and IISc have reported the highest suicide cases while private colleges have reported the lowest.
SDR equals to number of suicides per lakh population – a methodology that has been used to examine suicide data and trends. The SDR allows comparison of suicides across colleges of varying populations by taking a common denominator of one lakh student population on an average of 10 years of data.
Psychologists say factors like high societal expectations for academic excellence, inability to cope with the punishing schedule and rigorous syllabus, little or hardly any personal connect with family, friends, and even faculty members, and poor outreach by on-campus counsellors often lead to mental health issues for students.
Mrinmoyee Sinha, whose parents were professors in IIT Kharagpur, and who grew up in IIT Kharagpur, says they had heard about one suicide case back then. She says: “The rising number of suicides indicates the students perhaps are not equipped to cope with stress as they lack essential life skills. In coaching classes where they spend most of their time, they are only taught to deal with problems mechanically. Our entire education system is so performance and score-oriented, that all attention is on cracking the toughest exam. They do not have time to build relationships and as such get socially isolated. Out there on the campus in an entirely new environment, they have adjustment problems. Often loneliness catches up with them. They do not communicate with their families lest they worry. The intellectual and emotional growth of each student is different and does not match. You may have cracked the hardest exam, you may be brilliant, but you may have a weak and brittle mind. You are not given any timeout to bounce back. If you relax, you are already lagging behind. Caught in this turmoil, students often lose hope and take the only way out.”
Inadequate counselling
Many students voice the counselling centres are not working properly. The IIT Madras’s wellness centre was dissolved in December 2023 after students demanded confidentiality and no faculty involvement in the wellness centres.
Although IIT Guwahati runs a centre for holistic well-being, students want more counsellors at the centre. In a statement issued on September 11 this year, the institution has decided to enhance "well being services," establish Peer Support Network, review safety protocols and awareness programmes. The statement, however, did not talk about the demand for relaxation of attendance norms. Several campaigns to promote open communication are also being promoted.
Psychologist Satish Kaushik, founder Rajbala Foundation, a NGO working in Health Care (Palliative) and Education says, “Performance pressure, IIT ego, bullying, casteist slurs often lead to mental health issues amongst students when they fail to measure up to high performance standards amongst all toppers. The mind may not be strong to handle failure but this weakness is invisible, nobody notices and it aggravates. Academic stress is definitely one of the factors. But a culmination of other factors like family issues, social isolation, being genetically anxiety prone, make students take the extreme step. Relationship issues and job insecurity issues plague the senior students. Mental health awareness camps, 24X7 availability of counsellors, teachers, buddy system all should be part of a supportive system.”
Seena Mary Thankachan, a research associate at Pune International Centre, who has analysed the reasons behind the suicides, says : “The competitive environment fosters self-isolation, making academic success seem more attainable but often at the cost of mental well-being.”
Institutes, on the other hand, are trying to be more sensitive and receptive to students’ needs. Delhi IIT has launched the Jaagte Raho Campaign – “Help, Report, Support”, which provides quick support to distressed students. Variants of the “buddy system” have been implemented on campus, where senior students take care of 10 to 20 juniors and report and identify those with depressive signs and take them to faculty or counsellors who guide them. Then there is the ‘ Beating the Blues Campaign – to deal with personal challenges. An initiative called Academic Progress Group has been started which creates a pool of residential handholding to see the finish line.
But these measures are clearly not enough.
Preventive measures needed
Most actions are knee-jerk, often taken after a suicide has been committed. Singh says: “There is a time gap between one suicide and the next when a child is thinking of committing one. The measures should be preventive, rather than being after-reactions. The cycle should start early during admissions, even conducting a psychological autopsy which assesses the mental well-being of a student of whether he or any of his family members has been taking any psychological help. It is like screening each child at the entry point and identifying the high-risk ones early. And faculty should also be trained to identify the depressive ones. If a student is skipping classes, seems cut off from the rest of his friends, not taking food, then it is too much to expect the child to go for counselling himself. He or she would barely have the energy to seek help. There should be an outreach programme that should include community workers, psychologists, and clinical psychiatrists who would be visiting the hostels, and the common areas and monitor early signs. The system should be more adaptive and supportive rather than rigorous. Till now there is no system to take care of students’ grievances.”
Seena Mary adds: “A flexible curriculum, continuous assessment methods and structured support for managing backlogs can go a long way to reduce academic stress. For those who come from economically and socially marginalised backgrounds, and who often face discrimination, support groups are essential. And cultural sensitivity training should be made mandatory for all with strict anti-discriminatory policies in the campus.”
Students, on the other hand, are demanding relaxation in attendance policy, a panel to oversee student-professor interaction and grades that are given and more accessible and friendly counsellors, who can advise them soundly when they are falling apart.
The IITs have woken up to the problem. The IIT Guwahati, for example, has set up a task force to reach out to every student and provide the necessary support, prioritized starting dedicated counselling services at the hostel level, and strengthened the faculty advisory system to ensure students receive timely academic guidance and support. “By prioritising student well-being and implementing these comprehensive measures, we aim to prevent future tragedies and ensure the success of our students,” Devendra Jalihal, the director of the IIT Guwahati, told DH. The IIT Madras, which witnessed 26 suicides between 2005 and 2024, appointed a retired state police chief as the student ombudsman.
The death of Darshan Solanki, a first-year student of IIT Bombay, on February 12 last year was blamed on caste discrimination. This prompted Union education Dharmendra Pradhan to ask the IITs to adopt a policy of zero tolerance for any kind of discrimination.
(With inputs from MRITYUNJAY BOSE and E T B SIVAPRIYAN, DHNS)