Sep 24, 2026 10:41 am IST

Opinion | IIT Suicide Case, And Why India's Brightest Children Feel So Trapped

Jawahar Surisetti Jawahar Surisetti Columnist

Jawahar Surisetti Columnist

Every tragedy produces an instinct to act, and the quickest action is almost always the most visible one. When a young person dies on a campus, administrators reach for what can be removed, locked or punished. Fixtures come out of hostel rooms. Terraces are sealed. Disciplinary committees convene. These steps answer the question of how a student died. They leave untouched the only question that matters: why a gifted young person, who cleared one of the most competitive examinations on earth, came to believe that living was no longer possible.

The latest death at IIT Bombay, the third on that campus in seven months, has revived the debate. But to treat it as a Powai problem, or even an IIT problem, is to miss its meaning. It is a symptom of something far larger in the way India educates, measures and values its young.

A Pattern, Not an Accident

An RTI-based compilation counts at least 171 IIT students who died by suicide or other unnatural causes between 2006 and September 2026. The first decade accounted for 51 of those deaths; the second, 120. Beyond the IITs, the National Crime Records Bureau recorded over 13,000 student suicides in 2022 alone, and student suicides have been rising faster than suicides in the general population. Coaching hubs, medical colleges, NITs, central universities and residential schools all appear in this grim ledger.

A pattern this persistent, across institutions this varied, cannot be explained by individual weakness or bad luck. It is the output of a system. And systems can be redesigned.

The Roots of the Crisis

The tyranny of rank. Most students who reach an elite institution have been the brightest person in every room for a decade. Many spent their adolescence in........

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