More students die by suicide than farmers: a new deadly crisis

Suicides among students in India are often the result of three interrelated pressures: caste discrimination, economic stress and sexual harassment.

Caste discrimination has a major impact on marginalized students, especially those from rural areas, who struggle to adapt to the urban academic environment. Students who attend elite institutions like IITs, IIMs and Central Universities face cultural isolation, language barriers and prejudices due to their reservations, adding to their challenges.

The case of , a Dalit PhD candidate, brought national attention to caste discrimination. Vemula’s suicide was the result of systemic neglect and social exclusion within the University of Hyderabad.

These practices exist against the backdrop of India’s urban-rural divide, where elite urban institutions are seen as inaccessible to rural lower-caste students, and as a result, economic stress acts as a silent but powerful force , which drives many students to despair.

Because they carry the hopes of their families, they often take on significant debt to pay for their education. But what happens when that promise becomes a ? More than half of highly indebted borrowers experience depression because of their loans, and 9 in 10 struggle with it. The burden can feel brutal, with 1 in 15 borrowers considering suicide as a way out. The weight of debt, family expectations, and an unstable job market can make the goal of education feel like an unbearable burden.

This silence is further compounded by the lack of proper grievance mechanisms and unresponsive institutional policies that pay lip service and serve no one.

The patriarchal norms of Indian society further discourage women from speaking out about unjustified and unlawful violations committed by the opposite sex. The cultural stigma surrounding such harassment, combined with complete insensitivity, further leads to feelings of guilt, shame and isolation.

When these problems persist in all settings, from top-ranked universities to private and public schools in both urban and rural areas, the experience of victims in conservative families becomes even more monstrous. This isolation often proves fatal, leaving victims feeling trapped and hopeless, sometimes leading them to the tragic choice of taking their own lives.

(Deepanshu Mohan is Professor of Economics, Dean, IDEAS, Office of Inter-Disciplinary Studies, and Director of the Center for New Economics Studies (CNES), OP Jindal Global University. He is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and an academic visitor to the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford in 2024. Ankur Singh, Bhanavi Behl, Niharika Amte, and Theresa Jose are research assistants at CNES and members of the CNES InfoSphere Team. This is an opinion article and the opinions expressed above are those of the author. The Quintdoes not endorse it nor is it responsible for it.)