Jagdeep Dhankhar, Chairman of the Rajya Sabha took note of the rise in the number of student suicides due to stress induced by competitive exams on Wednesday, December 13. He also implored the members of the Upper House to discuss the issue.
Members of the Rajya Sabha raised five supplementary questions on student suicides due to competitive exams during the Question Hour.
While Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan replied to all oral supplementaries, other members continued to display apprehension in discussing the issue.
Acknowledging the gravity of the issue, Dhankhar appealed to the members of the Rajya Sabha to talk about it, as “this is an issue (in which) we must involve ourselves”.
“We can make huge contributions,” he added.
He suggested creating an ecosystem where student suicides can be minimised and brought down to zero, a report by PTI states.
"Everyone has a role to contribute. I will be open to a discussion on this issue as the members may feel," he stated.
Pradhan, in responding to the house on the starred or oral questions, informed the members that, there were 1,70,924 (1.70 lakh) suicides reported in 2022, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).
Suicides due to failure in examinations made up 2,051 or 1.2 per cent of this number.
"I take responsibility for this. This should be zero", the minister stated.
In a supplementary, Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi asked if the minister plans to incorporate data-building systems, "considering we have seen a 70 per cent rise in students committing suicides in the past decade".
The minister said there was no such fact before him, quoting the 2022 NCRB data.
Stating that she had put up data in the House with "full responsibility", Chaturvedi talked about the last 10 years' data of the NCRB.
Congress MP KC Venugopal also added that in a reply in the Rajya Sabha, the Ministry of Education said that a minimum of 15 students from the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe/Other Backward Class (SC/ST/OBC) communities had died by suicide in central universities, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) from 2018 to 2021.
He also stated that more than 13,000 students from SC/ST/OBC communities have dropped out from IITs, IIMs and central universities during the past five years.
Venugopal further asked if the government was going to take serious action on caste discrimination, mental harassment or matters of student suicides.
