The growing tragedy of student suicide

Jeevan Nair

According to India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) 7390 students committed suicide in 2010, up 26 per cent from 5857 in 2006 (all-India figures).  We can better understand the enormous tragedy of the situation if we realize that in 2010 twenty students killed themselves each day of the year!  And the suicide rate is going up. The 2010 figure represents a 9 per cent gain over 2009.

Odisha is no exception.  In the Capital City alone 13 student suicides took place in the last one year, four of them in a period of just 45 days.

The reasons for this grim state of affairs are many, all valid: shortage of qualified teachers, inadequate infrastructure, a growing number of students competing for inadequate seats in good schools and colleges, curricula created by bureaucrats that are out of sync with today’s employer needs and parents forcing children into colleges/courses ignoring their inclination and propensity.  Add to this extra tuitions, out-of-school trends, coaching classes, competitive exams, reservation policies, admission processes, quotas and love affairs in a permissive environment and one gets a better understanding of the intense pressures that beset today’s students from all sides.

Also, the growing hunger for quality education among the young people to qualify for higher-paid jobs adds another dimension which also accounts for falling standards of teaching as well as the dichotomy of a growing number of vacant seats in colleges despite the rise in student numbers.  ‘Deemed’ universities and coaching institutes are mushrooming beguiling parents with tempting claims and quite a number fall into the trap only to find that not only have they spent huge amounts for no benefit but also wastes years of their wards’ formative period.  Today, students and their parents understand the value of a good college and avoid institutes which have a low pass percentage.

Counselling is the best tool to remedy the students’ misery.  But not as it is done at the time of admission.  Counsellers should interact not only with students but also with parents and teachers and should be available 24/7.  In many cases, parents are responsible for student stress by making insidious comparison with other children who they feel are doing better.  They fail to realize that each child is different, has different propensities, capabilities and interests. Parents are usually blind to this aspect because they judge progress by report cards alone.  Teachers are more familiar with the child’s inclination and can make suitable suggestions during counselling.

Parents should concentrate more on providing the child with a happy and stress-free environment at home.  They should spend quality time with their children to learn their feelings and emotional stress, if any.  They must be ever on the look out for behaviour that is out of the normal as the first sign of stress is a change in behaviour or habit.  On their part, teachers should desist from any type of favouritism.  A child should never feel that he is not getting as much attention as others in its class.

All this will not eliminate stress altogether but the student will know there are people in the school and at home who will listen to him and guide him in stressful situations. 

Parents and teachers who wish to know more about how to raise children and teach them can resort to the Internet.  There are scores of sites which provide the advice of experienced child counsellers and child psychologists.

We have focused on child counselling because when the child grows up in a caring atmosphere, it will develop into a balanced, thinking young man or woman.  From childhood itself they will realize that there are people who really care for them at home and at school and college ready to help them.

In spite of the best parental and school care stressful situations will still occur, but suicide will no longer be an option.