A Supreme Court-appointed national task force (NTF) to prevent student suicides has identified increased academic pressure and inadequate facilities in higher educational institutions (HEIs) to address mental health issues as the key problems.
The NTF, headed by retired Justice Ravindra Bhat, conducted a nationwide survey in 2025 covering nearly 12.8 lakh students, 1.6 lakh faculty members, 2.26 lakh parents and 16,750 HEIs.
Based on the survey, the NTF found that suicides were the second-highest cause of death among men and the highest cause of death among women in the 15-29 age group. It sifted National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) data to find that student suicides stood at an alarming 13,000 in 2022.
In IITs alone, 40 students have died by suicide in the last 30 months.
The NTF said students from SC, ST, OBC, Persons with Disabilities (PwDs), women, non-English speaking and rural backgrounds formed a distinct group on college campuses in terms of privilege, confidence and, in some cases, competence.
For these groups, the regulators have mandated the HEIs to put in place support systems such as equal opportunity cells/centres (EOCs) to address grievances related to caste bias, and internal complaints committees (ICCs) to redress sexual harassment of women employees and students. The HEIs have also been asked to ensure proportionate representation of the marginalised groups in faculty and administrative positions.
“One might argue that the aforesaid support systems, all predominantly exist in most HEIs, in some form or the other. However, such an averment would be visibly distant from the truth as the work of the NTF has itself revealed that they either only exist on paper, or not at all; even when they exist in actuality, they are merely tokenistic,” said the NTF in its report.
It said EOCs and ICCs existed in several institutions, but lacked independence and often favoured the perpetrators or aggressors.
“Cases are suppressed and proceedings are often biased. This also induces fears of academic or social backlash in students and prevents them from accessing grievance redress mechanisms. Even if such bodies are constituted with the right members, they are said to lack any real authority in the larger administrative framework of the HEIs to take any action, rendering them virtually powerless when faced with any incident of sexual harassment or discrimination,” it said.
The NTF found that ragging persisted in HEIs under the garb of “bonding exercise” or a “friendly ice-breaking effort”. Though HEIs obtain anti-ragging declarations from students on paper, they do not address such incidents when they occur, and consequences for the perpetrators are minimal or absent, the task force observed.
Many student respondents complained to the NTF about increased academic pressure, rigid attendance policies, unplanned scheduling of the academic curriculum, faculty shortage, excessive reliance on inexperienced guest faculty and non-transparent or non-existent placement processes.
In technical institutions offering PhD programmes, the NTF learnt that high research demands, financial difficulties, uneven and inconsistent relationships with supervisors and lack of adequate laboratory equipment worsened the mental health of students. Engineering students highlighted the intense academic expectations, driven by placements and salary packages.
“When institutional spaces have no space for camaraderie, all students suffer. Especially, students from diverse social and economic backgrounds suffer more,” it said.
The NTF survey found that around 65 per cent of the institutes did not provide access to mental health service providers (MHSPs) on campus.
A handful of HEIs have adopted a standardised policy that requires all students to undergo psychiatric evaluation in counselling centres, irrespective of their individual needs. The NTF disapproved of such an approach.
Based on the NTF report, the Supreme Court on January 15 ruled that providing safe, inclusive and responsive campuses was a legal and constitutional obligation and institutions cannot evade responsibility.
The court has asked the NTF to develop model SOPs for well-being audits, mental health services and faculty training and extended its tenure till June 30.