Recently, three students from Rajasthan's Kota took their own lives within 12 hours of each other. 2 of these students were NEET aspirants and one was JEE Main. Including these three students, a total of 14 students commited suicide while preparing for the competitive entrance exams.
While, an IIT Bombay post-graduate student committed suicide by jumping off from the hostel building, in Hyderabad.In which, depression was seen as the primary reason for suicide.
Two other student of Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge and Technologies (RGUKT) in Basara town of Telangana’s Nirmal district died by suicide by hanging himself in the campus premises.
In the past six months more than ten medical students also have died by suicide.
And, a 17-year-old boy allegedly hanged himself at his home under academic stress.
Whereas, a fifth-semester B Tech student in
computer science and engineering and is alleged to have died by suicide due to
‘mental pressure” in Guwahati.
Twenty-two students took their own lives in a week
in Telangana , because they had failed their school’s intermediate exams.
According to a report a number of 45 student
suicide cases were recorded in Kota in 2014 alone for career related issues.
Everyday we read such type of suicidal cases, where thousands of students across the country are dealing with academic distress.
The World Health Organization (WHO), in its new report revealed that India has the highest suicide rate in Southeast Asia. Student suicide is a serious problem, which cannot be ignored.
What NCRB report says,
According to the latest National Crime
Record Bureau (NCRB) data, in 2020, India recorded a new high of 12,526
suicides by students, which means one student took his own life every 42
minutes; that is, more than 34 students died by suicide every day; with an
increase of 4.5 per cent in 2021.
The total number of suicides has surged by 3.6% to 1,34,516 in 2018 from 1,29,887 in 2017. The numbers were 1,31,008 in 2016, 1,33,623 in 2015 and 131666 in 2014. In short, while the suicides number fell in between 2015 and 2017, it has risen again. 10,159 suicides of the total 1,34,516 suicides or 7.6% in 2018 were students. The figure increased by 2.6% from 9905 suicides in 2017. The number of students’ suicides was reported to be 9,478 in 2016, 8,934 in 2015 and 8,068 in 2014.
As per the ‘Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India 2018’ report released by the NCRB, Maharashtra topped the list of states in terms of number of suicides committed by students with reported 1,448 suicides [14.3% of total suicides committed by students] followed by Tamil Nadu (953 suicides), Madhya Pradesh (862 suicides), Karnataka (755 suicides) and West Bengal (609 suicides).
While, The Lancet report said that the average suicide rate in India as reported by the NCRB, was 37% lower than the rates reported by the Global Burden of Disease. This means that for every 100 suicides in the country, only 63 are reported by the NCRB.
Estimate says that 75000 students committed suicide in India from 2007 to 2016, that means student suicide rate in India is increasing everyday.
The NCRB report also showed the educational status of suicide victims and stated that “only 4.6% of total suicide victims were graduate and above.” About 11 per cent of the victims were illiterate, while 15.8 percent of them were educated up to the primary level, according to the NCRB report.
One of the biggest and the most repetitive reasons stated for these incidents are fear of failure among students, forced career choices, and the general stigma attached to mental stress or depression. For example, in the month of May in 2017 faced 12 students suicide including 6 girls in Madhya Pradesh. They were depressed because of their results in class Xth and XIIth exams which are conducted by the state board.
According to a survey by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, about 4 in 10 students in India have experienced bouts of depression in the last few years.
The general perception among experts is that inability to cope with academics is a primary drive for students to commit suicides at the alarming rate. The fear of academic failure is such a prevalent cause for suicides among students that it is recognised as a category ‘Failure in Examinations’ - by the NCRB (National Crime Record Bureau).
Is failure to live up to expectations the only reason for student suicides?
No, this is not the only cause for such incidents.
Here are some instances;
A 17-year-old from Ghaziabad took her own life after she cracked the IIT-JEE entrance examination in 2016.In her five-page suicide note, she wrote about how she never wanted to study science or be an engineer.
Seventeen-year-old Kriti Tripathi wrote the suicide note before jumping to her death from a five-storey building in Kota on 28 April 2016.She had scored 144 marks in the JEE Mains 2016 results declared a day before, on 27 April. But she writes….she never wanted to be an engineer.
A 28 years old student hanged himself after he was not allowed to write his UPSC exam because he had reached the exam centre four minutes late.
In actual, only 30% of student suicides are due to failure in exams, In the majority of cases, there are other causes that trigger student suicides.
Every student is working hard in their life to get their desired career but are they getting equal opportunity.
However, the truth is that India is losing 80,000 seats every year.
Let’s take an another example,
There are about 15,53,809 engineering seats (UG), 5,29,625 medical seats and 1,97,018 PG seats all over India, and about 1.6 crore students take the 12th class exam and the pass percentage is 80% i.e. 70 lakh students. Will be ready to apply to various universities, colleges and professional courses.
Thus the ratio of total number of seats and students who passed class 12th is 0.269, which means around 49,16,566 students are still left who cannot avail the opportunity to study in engineering or medicine stream .
If we consider other courses like commerce, there are thousands of other students who have no opportunity left.
There are many instances where the student's grades are good but, the other parameter which prevents him/her from getting the seat is his/her caste.
In India, 22.5% of the total available seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) students. Over the last seven years, a total of 122 students have committed suicide. Roughly half of them belonged to the marginalised castes or tribes. Out of the 24 were SC and ST, 41 were OBC's. Many of these students were from IITs and IIMs.
Other reasons for why do students commit suicide,
India has one of the world’s highest suicide rates for youth aged from 15 to 29, according to a 2012 Lancet report.
India's adolescent and youth population, i.e. people under the age of 25 years, constitute 53.7% of the population. This youth consists of a large number of students from different parts of the country, who are of different ages, backgrounds, religions and even people seeking knowledge.
Many of these students are also suffering from depression, anxiety and trauma as they are facing various problems in choosing their career. In such a situation, they are taking tough decisions and are considering ending their lives by committing suicide. It is estimated that more than 15 students out of 100 are affected by suicides
Academic distress, getting ranks on board exams and entrance exams, getting high GPA's, stupid competitions, poor performance in examinations, parental expectations, social pressure, substance abuse, lack of English-medium education, private institutions charging high fees, financial status of the family, poor quality education in government-run schools and institutes, ever-growing economic inequality, poverty, unemployment in India which is at a 45-year high, which is another reason for these suicides, most graduates not having enough skills to secure jobs (Wouldn't be wrong to say that education in India has been viewed as a gateway to employment and livelihood rather than to knowledge), even the caste discrimination; are main reasons of these suicides.
India is the world's second most populous
country of over 1 billion and has one of the highest suicide rates among the
aged of 15 to 29 and third over women suicide in the world each year. The
reason for such is common academic stress , the fear of failing in the
cutthroat educational environment, due to lack of social accountability.
Somewhere, the pressure to succeed eventually overshadows
everything else in a student's life.
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