Human beings often like to believe that they are powerful enough to control their own destinies. Stories of individuals who have surpassed physical or emotional limitations are celebrated as examples of human triumph. But what happens when the struggle is not personal or physical but structural? What of those who are not fighting a failing body, but battling social, institutional, or systemic forces? This piece focuses not on natural disasters or external catastrophes. Instead, it considers situations in which structural disadvantages are reframed and personalised. This reframing is often done — sometimes knowingly, often unconsciously — to absolve the State of its responsibility.

Let me illustrate this argument through three examples.

First, consider the disturbing rise in student suicides at the Indian Institutes of Technology. While various causes are cited, one of the most deep-rooted and least openly acknowledged is caste-based prejudice. These institutions are known for their rigorous entrance examinations and highly competitive environments. However, they are also often spaces of exclusion and discrimination, particularly for students from reserved categories.

Students are regularly questioned about their admission ranks — a thinly-veiled method of uncovering their caste identity. What follows is subtle and overt caste-based ragging, isolation, and stigmatisation. Students from marginalised communities are made to feel as though they do not belong, and this alienation can lead to severe emotional distress.

In response, institutions often prescribe counselling. While counselling is important, it cannot remedy the psychological toll of systemic discrimination. The issue is not a lack of coping mechanisms but a deeply embedded structural injustice. Only strong institutional action against discrimination and a commitment to equity can begin to address the problem meaningfully. This logic applies equally to students
who suffer under exam pressure. From a young age, students are indoctrinated into an exam-driven culture. Marks are positioned as the ultimate indicator of worth. The cultural weight of performance is not so easily shrugged off.

The second example is the common habit of mistaking the symptom for the problem — blaming individuals for their own marginalisation. Consider the unemployed youth being told, ‘You’re jobless because you spend your time loitering with friends.’ Or the woman chided for having poor menstrual hygiene, as though it were a matter of personal neglect.

These are not causes but symptoms. As Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator, wrote, loitering may be the result of unemployment, not its cause. Similarly, a poor woman may know full well that unhygienic menstrual practices can lead to infections, but she may not be able to afford sanitary products. Blaming the individual in such cases serves to deflect attention away from the systemic causes of inequality.

The third example is perhaps the most complex.

Occasionally, individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds succeed despite the odds. Their success is celebrated, their grit praised, and they become the face of what hard work can achieve. While such achievements deserve recognition, they are often used to push a misleading narrative: that success is solely a matter of effort. This narrative allows society to ignore the structural obstacles that most people from similar backgrounds cannot overcome — not due to a lack of effort but because the odds are stacked too high. In glorifying these success stories, the State and the privileged classes find a convenient way to shirk their responsibility.

In conclusion, the fundamental problem lies in our collective failure to distinguish between individual shortcomings and structural injustices. We must move from individual blame to structural accountability. Most importantly, we must recognise that the problem is not always within the individual — sometimes it is the world that needs fixing.

Disha Nawani teaches Education in Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai