Dev 360 | Is India’s Aspirational Trap Crushing Its Kids? | Patralekha Chatterjee

You can gauge a society’s deepest failures not from what it loudly protests, but from what it pushes aside. In India, the surge in child suicides wrenches open a truth we keep trying to bury — the suffocating helplessness that shadows so many children. There are very few safe spaces or people a child can turn to, talk freely, and find emotional support in times of crisis. Despite all the loud talk about mental health, it is not getting easier for children.

In November 2025 alone, four students under 18 took their lives, each leaving behind notes that read like desperate indictments of the adults entrusted with their care. These tragedies, spanning Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, expose not just failures but a systemic rot in India's hyper-aspirational culture — where a child’s worth is measured by marks, obedience and endurance without complaint.

A gut-wrenching case which made national and international headlines unfolded just days ago when parents, students and relatives gathered outside New Delhi’s prestigious St. Columba’s School to protest against the death of a 16-year-old, whose suicide note explicitly blamed his teachers for months of relentless humiliation.

The Class 10 student was a vivacious boy who loved dancing, dramatics, scripting short films and dreamt of becoming another Bollywood superstar, like Shah Rukh Khan, once a star pupil of St Columba’s.

But at an age when one should hope and dream, the teenager threw it all away, jumping from the platform of the Rajendra Place Metro Station. His hand-written suicide notes, found in his school bag, reveals his abject despair. He talked about his persistent humiliation by specific teachers, apologised to his family, and asked that his organs be donated. “My last wish is that action is taken against them; I don't want any other child to do what I did."

Classmates revealed he had confided suicidal thoughts to the school counsellor weeks earlier, only for it to be dismissed as a “joke”, never escalating to his parents.

The school has suspended three teachers and the principal pending investigation. Protests have erupted outside the school with parents and students demanding accountability and stronger mental health safeguards, echoing his own plea.

The Delhi teen’s suicide is by no means an aberration.

In one of his recent shows on YouTube, Akash Banerjee, host of the satirical show The Desh Bhakt, asked if “Terror Teachers” were pushing students over the edge? Within hours of the episode going live, “hundreds of comments poured in — most describing their harrowing time in school because of terror teachers,” Banerjee tweeted.

“High time we understand and speak to students — in a safe space — without judgment — to understand what's making them crack… before it’s too late,” he said, sharing his own personal story. He had flunked his board exam but had a supportive family; he got a second chance, opted for subjects where he had real aptitude, and went on to shine in his chosen space.

Not every child is so lucky.

The teenager’s death is part of a devastating November cluster that underscores the scale of the child suicide epidemic in the country. Among those who died by suicide this month, there was a nine-year-old Class 4 girl in Jaipur. She leapt from her school building after 18 months of classroom bullying, including verbal abuse from peers. Teachers ignored it despite her pleas.

Typically, the suicide triggers are bullying, academic pressure and sexual misconduct by educators. The common thread: ignored cries for help, vulnerability met with dismissal, amplifying the isolation until silence turns fatal.

As I write, the stories have already slipped from the front page. Will the children slip further into the shadows?

India’s children are growing up in an environment where academic pressure is relentless. The board exams in Classes 10 and 12 are treated as life-defining events, and students are made to believe that their entire future hinges on marks scored in a few hours of testing. Parents, often driven by fear of economic insecurity, push their children into coaching classes, tuition centres and endless cycles of study. Schools, meanwhile, frequently prioritise discipline and results over empathy, leaving little space for individuality or creativity.

The boy from St Columba’s, remembered for his imagination and humour, was crushed under this machinery of conformity. His dreams of storytelling and cinema were drowned out by the noise of exams and expectations.

Student suicides have risen by 65% in the past decade, from 8,423 in 2013 to 13,892 in 2023, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

Suicide is now the second leading cause of death among young people aged 15 to 29. And yet, India is not creating enough safe spaces to talk about the issues critical to its children.

There are just not enough counsellors who are sensitive and non-judgmental. In a society where being open about one’s vulnerability is uncommon, stigma around mental health persists. If a child is bullied at school, s/he is also scared of opening up about his anxiety at home for fear of not living up to parental expectations. An adolescent is typically expected to be obedient. Pushing back is seen as disrespectful.

“Children might be struggling with a lot of issues — academics, body image, bullying, relationships, etc — and in the absence of being able to speak and seek help where needed, might unfortunately have serious mental health repercussions or try to harm themselves. The pressure of expectations and guilt around this is also a significant factor, both for young students, and how they perceive what their families (and the society around them) sees as measures of ‘success’,” Dr Anant Bhan, principal investigator, Sangath (a public health research organisation focused on mental health) told me.

Sangath colleagues, Dr Bhan noted, have been working on school and youth mental health projects including innovative approaches such as It is Ok to Talk, Outlive, SMHPP (School Mental Health Promotion Programme) to generate evidence and develop interventions to address this issue.

Sadly, such initiatives are still too few.

In July 2025, the Supreme Court issued 15 detailed guidelines to prevent such tragedies, emphasising counselling and grievance mechanisms, to create safer, more nurturing and supportive learning environments. Yet implementation remains uneven and inconsistent.

The tragedy of surging child suicides must force us to confront not just the cruelty of a few individuals, but the culture we have normalised. Children must be heard. For parents and teachers, empathy is not an option. It is basic. Change requires more than outrage. It must lead to a cultural shift that values children as people, not talking points or trophies for families or schools.

The writer focuses on development issues in India and emerging economies. She can be reached at patralekha.chatterjee@gmail.com