Kamal Ghorui
MUMBAI: The suicide of a student at IIT Kanpur this week has once again drawn attention to a deepening mental health crisis across India’s premier technical institutes, with figures showing that the Kanpur campus alone accounted for nearly 30% of all IIT student suicides over the past two years. According to data maintained by the Global IIT Alumni Support Group, at least 65 students died by suicide across the Indian Institutes of Technology between January 2021 and December 2025. Of these, 30 deaths were recorded in just the last two years. Nine of those occurred at IIT Kanpur — the highest number among the country’s 23 IITs. Dheeraj Singh, an IIT Kanpur alumnus from the 2004 batch and founder of the alumni group, said the concentration of deaths at one campus raises serious questions about institutional responsibility and leadership accountability. “The hon’ble Supreme Court has reaffirmed that mental health is an integral part of the Right to Life under Article 21,” Singh said. Referring to the Saha vs State of Andhra Pradesh judgment, he added that the court has clearly held student mental health to be a constitutional and institutional responsibility. Singh urged the Union education ministry to fix accountability at the highest level, arguing that repeated deaths indicate systemic failure rather than isolated personal crises. “Given that this is the ninth suicide on the IIT Kanpur campus in two years, the ministry should hold the director accountable for the grave state of mental health and consider bringing in new leadership to change the situation,” he said. Comparative figures, Singh pointed out, underline the disparity. IIT Kharagpur recorded seven suicides during the same two-year period, while IIT Bombay reported just one death despite having a larger student population than Kanpur. IIT Madras, he noted, has not reported a single student suicide in the last two years. Alumni and student bodies argue that official responses often reduce such deaths to “personal” or “academic” stress, masking a more complex reality shaped by relentless evaluation, intense competition, isolation, and, in some cases, caste- or language-based exclusion. Faculty members, speaking privately, admit that early warning signs are frequently missed and that institutional interventions tend to come only after distress has reached a critical point. The crisis at IITs mirrors a much larger national tragedy. National Crime Records Bureau data shows that India recorded over 13,000 student suicides in 2023 alone — an average of about 36 every day. With the Supreme Court constituting a task force to address student mental health and prevent suicides, alumni groups say the focus must now shift from episodic responses to sustained accountability and structural reform, starting with campuses that show persistently high numbers.
