The tragic loss of a second-year engineering student in a case of death by suicide -- the third such incident recorded among students of the institute over the last six months has rightly sent alarm bells ringing across the state.
After the victim’s family accused the institute of what they said was neglect towards students, the institute has now announced it is taking significant steps including revamping the existing curriculum, enhancing student experience to expand counselling services, improved sports and recreational facilities, increased gym hours, besides other initiatives to create safe spaces for students to converse around academic and personal challenges.
Suicides at the country’s top institutes as well as in cities that host coaching centres were already common. That it has now unfortunately made its way to Goa is a cause for concern. It would be easy to dismiss the students’ suicides as having succumbed to academic or parental pressure or peer pressure. The reality is often more complicated than that. Studies have shown that mental health is a disease like any other which has led to a deliberate change in terminology. Today we no longer say that someone ‘commits’ suicide but rather that they have ‘died by suicide’, to reflect that suicide has more to do with a mental health condition rather than a conscious decision taken by those suffering from the illness.
Whether the measures put in place by BITS will go a long way in helping the students of the institute remains to be seen. But what will remain outside the institute’s control is how society looks upon the bright minds of this country who are becoming adults in a world that is extremely judgemental, harsh, competitive and uncaring.
More so with well-paying jobs extremely hard to come by, inflation through the roof and a general atmosphere of struggling but being unable to catch up is affecting all sections of society and not just those living in a high-pressure environment like the campus of one of the country’s top institutes. It is here that the symptoms are more readily visible.
Unfortunately for us as a society, mental health professionals are not as easily available as general health practitioners and when they are, they are not easily affordable. Add to the fact that the stigma attached to accessing mental health only increases the barriers.
It is not without reason that BITS, in a statement released after the incident, recognized that the first thing that needs to be conveyed to students is that they need to acknowledge when they are struggling and reach out for support.
In this highly competitive and individualistic world, the sense of community that once held society together is sorely lacking. People in general and students in particular are conditioned to believe that failures are on account of individual weaknesses, most of us -- and not just students -- are being pushed into a corner by the way the world currently is.
We’re left to live with a very narrow definition of success in a world where just being a nice guy is seen as a sign of weakness. It is going to take more than just one institute changing its ways. The onus has to be on the entire academic system and on society itself to ensure that in our rush for success, we take everybody along, and not only those who know to succeed in a narrow set of circumstances.
