On Wednesday, April 26, as he was speaking at the Republic TV Summit held in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi casually recalled a “joke” from his childhood about a professor whose daughter died by suicide. He narrated how she left a note by her bed describing her disappointment with life and her decision to throw herself in the Kankaria, a lake in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad. The following day, the professor in the PM’s story finds the note and exclaims, “I have been a professor and worked hard for so many years. Yet, my daughter spells Kankaria wrong.”
The audience, including Arnab Goswami, the managing director and editor-in-chief of Republic TV, is in splits, along with the PM. Modi then goes on to say that Arnab’s Hindi has, however, gotten better over the years. The statistics on the deaths by suicide in the country underline why this “joke” by the country’s PM and the collective jest it sparked among the audience were distasteful and should have been avoided.
According to data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), between 2017 to 2021, there has been a steady increase in the suicide rate in the country. While the number was 1,29,887 in 2017, in 2021, it shot up to 1,64,033, showing a 12% increase. In 2021, 864 deaths by suicide were reported in the under-18 age bracket due to failure in examinations. If we take the case of higher education, Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed the Lok Sabha on April 3, 2023, that at least 25 students died by suicide in 2022, and that most of them happened at central universities and IITs (Indian Institute of Technology).
The months between April-June are also what we call the ‘exam season’ in the country when board examination results are anticipated, and students are under immense pressure to crack various entrance examinations that determine their entry into professional courses. Cashing in on this, several coaching centres have also cropped up across the country, further catalysing this sense of competition for students.
There is no denying that students across ages face constant duress to excel in exams, sometimes resorting to extreme steps like suicide when it becomes grueling. Our collective conscience also has internalised many ‘Sharma ji ka beta’ jokes and references, where Sharma ji’s son excels in every exam and is projected as the gold standard that all other students in the locality must aspire to become. Every student who scores less than Sharma ji’s son is devalued.
This kind of comparative value judgment is normalised by parents, teachers, and educational institutions. To address the psychological complexities students face, the Union government itself came up with the Manodarpan initiative to offer mental health support to them during COVID-19 and beyond.
In this context, for the PM himself to make such a joke at a big media event in the national capital is irresponsible, to say the least. This also defeats the purpose of the PM’s Pariksha Pe Charcha programme, where he himself interacts with students, teachers, and parents, to help manage examination stress.
Dalit PhD scholar Rohit Vemula’s final note calling his birth a “fatal accident”, which was recovered after his death by suicide inside the Hyderabad Central University campus, also hangs above our collective conscience as a reminder of the casteist violence faced by students of marginalised identities in universities. It is impossible for the just listener to not recall Rohit’s death when a politician, that too the most powerful one in the country, makes a suicide joke at a public forum.
After Rohit’s passing, there was much debate on the saffronisation of education and how systemic caste discrimination brings students to their knees. When the state’s educational infrastructure is politicised, it is the marginalised, who often earn seats against many odds in the hope of a better future, that feel hopeless enough to give up on their lives. Ideally, it is the state’s head and his democratic power that must then come to the rescue of students. If that is too much to expect, refraining from anchoring humour on tragedies is the very least a people’s representative can do.
In a fair and equal world, all humour may be good humour. It may also have been easier to overlook such trivialisation of suicides had this been a country where the mental health of students is not a cause of immediate concern. But in a world where the mental health of a student is cumulatively determined by social pressure, age, systemic barriers such as caste, class, and gender, and the attachment of individual worth to examination scores, one must be most responsible not to shrink the gravity of the matter to casual jest.
Arnab Goswami’s Hindi may have indeed improved, but the spelling mistake in a young girl’s suicide note should not have been a comic conversation starter to emphasise that. Coming from the PM himself who speaks about his absolute commitment to the well-being of his citizens, it is disappointing to watch him repeatedly contradict himself, though most of us have reluctantly accepted it as our new political reality by now.
If you are aware of anyone facing mental health issues or feeling suicidal, please provide help. Here are some helpline numbers of suicide-prevention organisations that can offer emotional support to individuals and families.
Andhra Pradesh
Life Suicide Prevention: 78930 78930
Roshni: 9166202000, 9127848584
Karnataka
Sahai (24-hour): 080 65000111, 080 65000222
Kerala
Maithri: 0484 2540530
Chaithram: 0484 2361161
Both are 24-hour helpline numbers
Tamil Nadu
State health department's suicide helpline: 104
Sneha Suicide Prevention Centre - 044-24640050 (listed as the sole suicide prevention helpline in Tamil Nadu)
Telangana
State government's suicide prevention (tollfree): 104
Roshni: 040 66202000, 6620200
SEVA: 09441778290, 040 27504682 (between 9 am and 7 pm
Aasara offers support to individuals and families during an emotional crisis, for those dealing with mental health issues and suicidal ideation, and to those undergoing trauma after the suicide of a loved one.
24x7 Helpline: 9820466726
Click here for working helplines across India.