Beyond mental health: SC report’s urgent message on student suicides

Last week, an interim report of a Supreme Court-appointed panel engaged with an issue of grave concern in the country’s educational landscape. Earlier this year, the Court had observed that student suicide cases had doubled over the last decade. It then constituted a National Task Force headed by a former judge, Justice Ravindra Bhat, to study the causes, review institutional mechanisms, and recommend a framework to prevent the loss of young lives. The Task Force’s report is significant because it argues that these suicides are not individual acts of despair, but symptoms of deeper institutional and structural deficits in India’s higher education system. For every suicide in India, the committee noted, there are more than 200 people experiencing suicidality in some form and more than 15 attempts. The goal, it rightly pointed out, “is not to just prevent a student from taking their life and keep them alive but also to look at the reasons that compelled a student to take this step.”

In recent years, institutions and policymakers have framed student suicides as a mental-health issue, and some universities have set up counselling facilities to address the crisis. These are well-meaning initiatives. But as the SC panel noted, based on a random survey, most counsellors are not mental-health professionals.

The broader challenge, it pointed out, is to situate the crisis within a socio-economic perspective.

That would require joining several dots – the almost universal recognition in the country of education as a gateway to social mobility; the increasing presence of students from marginalised communities, many of them first-generation learners, who do not always find an enabling milieu on campuses; the lack of diversity among faculties; delayed scholarships; administrative bottlenecks; and the high rate of dropouts among SC, ST, and OBC communities.

After Independence, reservations, scholarships, and the establishment of new institutions have enhanced access to spaces that once appeared terribly forbidding to learners from historically disadvantaged communities. This is, no doubt, a triumph of democracy and constitutional justice. By all accounts, however, in a deeply hierarchical society, admission to institutions does not ipso facto guarantee dignity or even equal opportunity. Experiences of caste and gender discrimination, subtle prejudice, social isolation, language barriers, financial insecurity, and, at times, institutional hostility come together to create pressures that cannot be addressed by a traditional mental health-centred approach.

In recent years, reports of suicides involving Dalit and Adivasi students have triggered conversations. However, institutional responses usually seek to individualise these deaths, attributing them to personal difficulties or students’ inability to cope with academic pressures. Rarely do institutions introspect and ask questions about the cultures of exclusion within campuses.

Almost every student enters a higher education institution carrying the weight of aspirations — their own as well as those of their families. But learners from historically disadvantaged social groups often have to navigate unfamiliar environments without the cultural capital enjoyed by their more privileged peers. Elite institutions, as the report noted, offer only a “mirage of mobility”: reservations open the door, but the discrimination students face inside pushes them out.

The task, therefore, is to frame inclusion in a broader way, beyond creating paternalistic protection through facilities such as counselling, and instead to create an environment in which every student can flourish without having to navigate social and economic impediments. The report points out that students frequently perceive institutional complaint systems as inaccessible, ineffective, or biased in favour of preserving institutional reputations. Marginalised students may be especially reluctant to report discrimination if they fear disbelief or even retaliation.

Policymakers and institutions need to pay special attention to what the report describes as a “social mismatch” between the backgrounds of students and teachers. More than 65 per cent of the faculty in IITs, NITs, and private institutions are from non-SC, ST, and OBC communities. Report after report, including several published in this newspaper, has shone a light on the tardy progress in filling faculty vacancies in reserved categories. There is also a wealth of literature on how diverse faculty can help create conditions on campuses where differences are respected and vulnerability is met with support. The Task Force’s suggestion that faculty vacancies, including reserved-category posts, be filled within three months should, therefore, be seen as an urgent imperative.

The Constitution recognises education as a key means of social transformation. The central message that education planners need to draw from the SC’s report is this: Equality, dignity, fraternity, and non-discrimination cannot remain abstract ideals; they must shape the lived experiences of students on campuses. When students from marginalised backgrounds encounter humiliation or exclusion, the country’s democratic fabric is weakened.

Till next time

Kaushik Das Gupta

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