On Friday, September 17, a 22-year-old student at IIT Bombay died by suicide—just a day after being caught using ChatGPT during an examination. Assurances by faculty that no disciplinary action would follow proved futile. It is the third such death at IIT Bombay in seven months, following an equally tragic case at IIT Delhi last month. Each incident triggers the same cycle: shock, protests, institutional statements, and a promised inquiry—and then, until the next incident, silence.

The true scale of the student suicide crisis in India is often obscured by narrow administrative classification. NCRB's latest report records 13,892 student suicides in India in 2023—8.1% of all suicides that year, the highest absolute count in a decade. Independent epidemiological research suggests the real toll could be much higher. In a landmark Lancet Public Health study, Prof Rakhi Dandona and colleagues estimated India's age-standardised suicide rate at 17.9 per 100,000—roughly 230,000 deaths in 2016 alone, nearly 100,000 more than the NCRB count for that year, and more than India's combined AIDS and maternal deaths for the same period. Yet, suicide prevention commands a fraction of institutional urgency.

The Social Trap: 'Log Kya Kahenge'

The root cause for this tragedy lies not in the weight of the curriculum but in an underlying psychological toll woven into our societal expectations.

Unfortunately, we are a culture held hostage by a corrosive perceived question: "Log kya kahenge?" An academic setback rarely stays a private, momentary setback—it unwittingly becomes an existential........

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