NIT suicides cast a dark shadow on campuses in India.
The alleged death by suicide of four students at the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Kurukshetra, in a span of two months, has exposed, yet again, the isolation of hyper-competitive academic environments, where distress goes unnoticed until it culminates in tragedy. Despite several progressive interventions in recent years, including the Supreme Court’s 2025 directives to institutionalise mental-health support across schools, colleges, hostels, and coaching centres, what emerges is a portrait of systemic crisis, where elite campuses built on unremitting pressure and constant scrutiny often overlook the human cost of failure.
The Haryana Human Rights Commission has taken suo motu cognisance of the tragedies and initiated an inquiry. Preliminary findings suggest reasons ranging from academic stress, financial distress, romantic rejection and debt due to online gambling. But NIT Kurukshetra is not an outlier in this crisis. Over the past 15 months, at least five students have died by suicide at BITS Pilani’s Goa campus. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) 2023 report, student suicides reached a record high of 13,892, a 65 per cent increase over the past decade. The path to a coveted seat at an IIT or NIT runs through years of hard work and coaching, often begun in early adolescence. Students arrive at institutions already hollowed out, stepping into a system that offers little reprieve. Overlaying all of this is the paucity of seats in premier institutions and an increasingly precarious job market.
The way forward demands both institutional accountability and an empathetic imagination. With peer-support networks, anonymous counselling helplines, and a restructuring of the curriculum, several IITs have begun to demonstrate what is possible. These measures need to be complemented with reforms that address challenges of diversity on campuses, both in terms of gender and socio-economic backgrounds. The conversations must also extend beyond mental-health infrastructure to the anxieties of opportunity.