Prerna, 14, took her own life after she failed two subjects in her Class VIII half-yearly exams. She is one of thousands of Indian students who take their own lives in India every year..
According to a 2014 report from the Indian government, exam-related pressure was the largest cause of suicide in India’s youth. On this podcast you’ll hear from people who work with suicide support groups, doctors, as well as the last words of several students from their suicide notes.
India’s student suicide crisis is no new development. India has consistently reported high suicide rates. A large number of suicides were reported in the 15-29 age group.
Twenty-two students took their own lives in a week in Telangana in April 2019, because they had failed their school’s intermediate exams.
What kind of psychological pressure leads students in school, like 14-year-old Prerna, to take their own lives?
But failure to live up to expectations isn’t the only cause for student suicides. A 17-year-old from Ghaziabad took her own life after she cracked the IIT-JEE entrance examination in 2016.
In her five-page suicide note, she wrote about how she never wanted to study science or be an engineer.
Seventeen-year-old Kriti Tripathi wrote the suicide note before jumping to her death from a five-storey building in Kota on 28 April 2016.
She had scored 144 marks in the JEE Mains 2016 results declared a day before, on 27 April. But she writes….she never wanted to be an engineer. The pressure to succeed eventually leads to everything else in a student’s life being side-lined, like extra-curricular activities and other things that could lead to a more well-rounded, healthy sense of self.
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