IIT-Delhi sett ups a committee last year to “study the institutional processes and environment” in relation to student suicide. it found several significant triggers, including post-coaching burnout, a grading system that promotes “toxic competitiveness,” relentless academic pressures, and a culture of caste and gender-based discrimination.
A transparent anti-discrimination policy, a rethinking of CGPA (or Cumulative Grade Point Average) as the sole measure of success, the recruitment of more empathetic campus leaders, the improvement of faculty-student relationships, compulsory civic education to reduce bias, and greater administrative responsiveness to student issues are some of the far-reaching structural campus reforms the 12-member committee has recommended to alleviate student distress.
Following demands from NIMHANS students, the committee was formed in March last year under the chairmanship of Santosh Kumar Chaturvedi, a senior professor of psychiatry and former dean of behavioral sciences.
What does the Chaturvedi Panel claim for IIT-Delhi?
There were five student suicides at IIT-Delhi in 2023 and 2024, the latest in October 2024, a month after the Chaturvedi panel reportedly submitted its recommendations.
We submitted our report last August. On condition of anonymity, one committee member said, “We have not received any communication from the administration (about the follow-up).”
IIT-Delhi director Professor Rangan Banerjee referred the reporter to Shiv Yadav, the institute’s public relations officer. The institute had nothing to comment on the findings of the committee, according to Yadav.
The committee, comprising IIT-Delhi faculty and former faculty members, student representatives, and psychologists and psychiatrists from other institutes, met 13 times between April to August 2024. It had interactions with stakeholders on campus through interviews and read reports on student welfare and student demands made previously in open house meetings.
According to information obtained, the committee’s report highlights seven areas for examination: faculty support; mental health concerns, counseling and support services; relational climate; academic environment, exclusion and discrimination; infrastructure and administrative difficulties.
Its main findings are reportedly as follows:
Peer connections are distorted, and the joy of learning is undermined by toxic competitiveness, which has its roots in the admission exam system and is exacerbated by coaching culture. Incoming students stress test scores over individual qualities, which results in loneliness and mental illness. Academic pressures are compounded by ceaseless demands, unrealistic deadlines, and weekend classes and examinations. Such pressure is compounded by the grading system that encourages competitiveness rather than collaboration. CGPA also dictates qualification for leadership positions and postings; high CGPA is strongly linked to professional success, which compounds anxiety.
SC/ST students said that they had felt anxiety because of being looked down upon and felt inferior. The committee further observed that “microaggressions” like asking rank in JEE’, which is often a surreptitious attempt to infer caste, contribute to the problems of these students.
Difficulty in adjusting and post-coaching fatigue are common problems when students initially enter the IIT.
Students indicated distrust due to perceived stigma, concerns regarding confidentiality, and insufficient knowledge of social discrimination problems, despite the existence of evidence for a high utilization of counseling services on campus.
The institute often forms committees to investigate problems, but many of the reports remain unaddressed.
Reports indicate that the committee calls for immediate institutional reforms to deal with these problems. These include:
Displaying a “non-discrimination policy” on the IIT website defining what behavior is considered inappropriate and the different corrective measures.
Mandatory training in equality, inclusivity, and courteous behavior must be undergone by all employees, instructors, and students.
UG and M.Tech students’ first semester courses will be substantially curtailed, and life and language skills classes and extracurricular activities will fill the gap.
Counselors must receive specialized training to be able to serve students from marginalized groups better, and all first-semester students must visit counseling centers to reduce stigma.
Update such things as relative grades and the academic qualifications to be eligible to stand for leadership positions; promote cooperation and teamwork.
The Supreme Court’s March 24 directive to form a National Task Force to probe the rising incidents of student suicides in higher education gives significance to the IIT-Delhi committee report.
Two IIT-Delhi students’ parents had moved an appeal against a January 2024 Delhi High Court order refusing to direct the police to lodge a formal complaint, and the court issued that directive in response.
The children, Ayush Ashna and Anil Kumar, “were killed with the conspiracy of IIT faculty members to conceal the actual facts, and both students have been wrongly depicted as having committed suicide,” the parents have alleged.
As per the complaint, the students belonging to the Scheduled Caste informed their parents about caste bias on the part of IIT-Delhi’s staff and faculty. They also complained about the faculty covering up the actual culprits.
Since 2018, there have been 98 suicides among students in institutions of higher learning, as presented to the Rajya Sabha by the Minister of State for Education in 2023. In 2018, there were 21 students enrolled at Central Universities, IITs, NITs, IIITs, IIMs, and IISERs who committed suicide.
This figure went down to 19 in 2019, 7 in 2020, and 7 in 2021. In 2022, the figure had gone up to 24, and in the period from January to July of 2023, 20 students died as a result of suicide.
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