Co-authored by Prithvi Vatsalya and Anuska Roy
Trigger Warning: Mentions of suicide, institutional death, attempted suicide, mental health conditions
“I think the strangest thing of all is how there is no collective mourning of the loss of student lives, rather it is always an individual lost. Until we recognise that in these individual losses hides an institutional interplay of caste, class, ablism (among other things), we will continue to lose young lives to institutional murder,” says Leo*, a student pursuing their Masters.
India has one of the largest youth populations in the world. I am sure you have heard this before. Young people are also widely recognised as the future of our nation and the globe. I am sure you have this one before too. So, what sort of a future can young’uns like us expect in mera Bharat mahan?
GOI Revokes The MANF Scholarship, But At What Cost?
This question becomes especially important when we look at the current climate on Indian campuses and how it’s affecting many students. To begin with, the Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF) has been scrapped by the central government on the flimsy ground that it overlaps with other fellowship schemes.
To understand why this is nothing but an excuse, we need to know a little more about the MANF. It’s a scheme that provided financial assistance to students from 6 minority communities (Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Jain, Parsi and Sikh), for a period of 5 years, while they pursued their MPhil and PhD programs.
According to Smriti Irani, former education minister and current Women & Child Development minister: “As per the data provided by the UGC*, 6,722 candidates were selected under the fellowship scheme between 2014-15 and 2021-22 with a cumulative disbursal of ₹738.85 crore.”
(*University Grants Commission)
You tell us: do thousands of students and their research interests not matter anymore? If they do, then why was the MANF done away with so hurriedly? If they don’t, then why pretend like they do? Naturally, student protests erupted in campuses across the capital city of Delhi, among other campuses in the country.
Resisting undemocratic acts is an act of great courage. If young people are being denied our rightful claim to a bright future, won’t we be angry? To quote Shakespeare: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
Importance Of Affirmative Action For Marginalised Students
Scholarships are an important way through which students from marginalised communities are able to access education which may become incredibly exclusionary at times. Affirmative action, which means providing resources to groups that have been disadvantaged, is an integral way through which educational spaces can be made accessible to all.
Students from AISA protesting the removal of MANF were detained by police forces in New Delhi. A social media post by the collective reads, “The announcement made by the Union Minister of Minority Affairs Smriti Irani is not that of a simple discontinuation of a government scheme, it is the very denial of social justice by the BJP government that disenfranchises already marginalised students from minority sections.”
As if the MANF being rolled back was not enough, multiple student suicides across different cities, from Bhubaneshwar to Kota, have been making the news too. Can you imagine what a young person feels like when they read about their peers dying? Is this what we have to look forward to?
Student Suicides Or Institutional Murder?
“Student suicide” is a misnomer. Because, the way we see it, these are nothing but “institutional murders”. Educational institutes, which are supposed to train and nurture students, are killing them. These spaces are pushing their students to end their lives because they feel so darn hopeless about their futures.
Rhea*, a student pursuing her undergraduate studies says:
“I’m growing tired of running around describing intimate details of life to people who couldn’t possibly care less in the hopes that this time someone might provide me with the resources I need to survive higher education.
But unfortunately, that is just what the life of a neurodivergent student is like in this country. It’s persistent scrutiny. It’s having to prove that you are struggling to anyone who asks only to be told that your pain is ‘all in your head’ and you just need better discipline in life.
My university provides psychological counselling services, but how much can therapy really help if the university then refuses to accommodate the needs of students in any practical way?”
Rhea says that allegedly there is a disability cell at her university, but she hasn’t been successful in finding it so far. Even if she did find it, she has no idea if their idea of disability covers mental health. The only option she has left is to hope for professors who understand, which again requires meeting every one of them individually and going through the dehumanising process of laying out very personal details of her life.
“Sometimes I’m lucky, and they understand. Other times it works against me. I’m told I'm being dramatic and am viewed with suspicion for the rest of the course. And then, I go through this deeply invasive process all over again the next semester. The process of obtaining a degree seems more and more impossible every day.”
Moreover, there is very little support that students who are struggling with mental health get from their institutions. It is not just a lack of resources, but also a lack of awareness which makes these universities a scary place for young people who find no help when they are in need of it the most.
Nico* a queer and neurodivergent student says, “I have had a failed suicide attempt twice this year. Do I still have anything to look forward to? No. Do I get any sort of support from the institutions I am a part of? No.
It is easy to say, “we will be there for you.” But it is pointless if one is not empathetic towards a person’s condition. It is pointless if society doesn’t become more aware of systemic and structural oppression. If there is no conversation about mental health. We have a long way to go and I would like to keep hope that things will change.”
Nico exerts that suicide is not an individual decision but structural coercion. They says that it would be wrong to say that an individual “committed” suicide. It is and will always be institutional murder till the time institutions stay ableist, casteist, homophobic and, transphobic.
Where Does The Pressure For Students End?
Three students between the ages of 16-18, studying in Kota’s coaching institutes, nay factories, died by suicide. Two of them were staying in adjacent rooms in the same paying guest accommodation. Think about the tremendous amount of stress they were under to have taken such a drastic step!
Moreover, in the past six months more than ten medical students have died by suicide. If you search ‘medical student suicide’ on Google, article after article lays out the gruesome details of how young people took their own lives because of systemic pressure.
Divya*, a medical college student herself says, “You'll find around 35%-45% medical students are medical students because their parents wanted them to be. Most of these parents aren't doctors themselves but they want to be able to say that their child is. Doctors are no longer made because they want to work to heal people. They are made by ambitious parents who want to climb the social ladder through their children.
Our institutions are staunch followers of “tough love” to the extent where the love is gone and it’s just tough. We are all pieces of coal which they believe need to be turned to diamond by putting us through tremendous pressure. Instead, we pass out as broken pieces of stone.”
Does University Reputation Hold More Value Than Student Lives?
If we speak of Bhubaneshwar, a Tweet alleges that at least 5 students (maybe more) have died by suicide in just the past couple of weeks. Instead of addressing the grave issue at hand, the institute in question (KIIT), allegedly returned the fees of its deceased students to their parents, in a bid to hush up the whole issue.
Does its reputation really matter more than the lives of its students? This is not limited to a particular institution or state. Students from all over the country have been demanding access to equitable mental health care and community support but educational institutions have been repressing these demands for decades now.
A student, Jay* says, “I can't speak for everyone but as a person diagnosed with bipolar disorder, life--which is hard enough anyway--is doing somersaults and practising kung fu in your backyard. Our university has an ‘Office of Learning Support’ with a mandate vague enough to not even know if learning support included anything for people with mood disorders.
We need transparency in function, true equality in access, and support built by and for the ones facing the challenges. Most colleges don’t have a centre for well being. Ours did and it was woefully understaffed and under-qualified to deal with even a fraction of the campus’ mentally ill residents.”
According to Jay, the lack of resources to support students’ mental health, students with mental illnesses, and neurodivergent students makes and breaks lives. Awareness helps everyone, but resources specifically built for those with mental health challenges are the only thing that brings a systemic, material change in their lives.
When young students start dropping like flies, we can be sure that something is really, really wrong with the Indian education system. And, why should students have to die before we realise that there is a rot in the system? It’s time we do something about this, not tomorrow, not the day after, but NOW!
*Student names have been changed to protect their identity