"How many more students need to die in order to call it a crisis?" ask experts commenting on the recent suicide of 21-year-old K Kiran Chandra, an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur student hailing from Telangana. The experts claim that a distressing and recurrent pattern is being observed with the student's death, as per a report by The New Indian Express.
"The initial response typically is to blame the student's inability to cope with the rigorous curriculum and a promise to form ad-hoc committees aimed at helping struggling students. However, there is no soul-searching about the reasons for the death of another innocent student," the experts allege.
Kiran's parents held the institute's faculty responsible for their son's apparent suicide. His father has questioned the intense academic pressure faced by students at IITs in general. In response, "The question at hand goes beyond identifying the causes of stress; it's about examining the actions these institutions take in response to such issues. The absence of any appropriate action after the first suicide raises questions," asserted Professor Ravikant Kisana, a specialist in cultural studies.
He also underscored that attributing student suicides to syllabus issues or personal coping abilities oversimplifies the matter and verges on victim blaming. "Paradoxically, these institutions almost seem to derive a sense of validation from the intensity of their programmes, as if extreme measures taken by students attest to the rigour of their systems," the professor says.
Drawing attention to IIT Kharagpur, Prof Ravikant noted a disturbing incident involving Prof Seema Singh berating students during an online class. He pointed out that it's not solely a matter of caste-based discrimination; these issues are rooted in Brahmanical notions of knowledge and the guru-shishya tradition.
"These institutions lack empathy, treating students as if they are in a boot camp with a militaristic cope-or-die mindset that persists even before students enter college. Comparatively, private liberal universities handle suicides differently," the professor states. He added that while action against harassing professors is uncertain, at least students are heard in such institutions, as per TNIE.
