Call for sector ombudsman to ease India’s PhD suicide crisis

Stress caused by the breakdown of relations between PhD students and supervisors in India could be reduced if doctoral candidates had access to an independent adjudicator, the author of the country’s student suicide prevention strategy has claimed.

Drawing attention to the lack of external help for PhD and master’s students in India, Lakshmi Vijayakumar, a consultant psychiatrist in Chennai, told Times Higher Education that a national ombudsman would help those who felt they had been failed by their supervisor or institution.

Her intervention follows a number of suicides among PhD students at India’s highly selective institutes of technology (IITs) this term – part of a trend of fatalities at the prestigious institutions which has seen 37 students die by suicide since 2019, and at least 11 so far this year.

While IITs have sought to improve counselling services and improved training for staff, the lack of an ombudsman service may be contributing to the problem, said Professor Vijayakumar, who wrote the government-commissioned National Suicide Prevention Strategy, published in November 2022, which seeks to reduce student mortality by 10 per cent by 2030.

“Students taking master’s or PhDs within IITs told us they found it very stressful that their guide or mentor had exclusive control over their future,” she explained. “If your supervisor is not happy with you, he or she can make things difficult for you, and there’s no moderating force if you want to raise a grievance.”

“That’s why we need some kind of ombudsman to provide that grievance redress system that is lacking. That would make it easier for students to reach out for help by providing a safe space to raise these issues.”

With about 13,000 student suicides recorded in India in 2022 and suicide rates twice the global average for young women, it was important to acknowledge this was a national problem faced by all educational institutions, said Professor Vijayakumar, who cited the high expectations of families – who will often remortgage their farms or homes to pay for cramming classes – as one specific cultural driver.

In the case of IITs, however, it was vital to understand the specific issues that might cause high-flying students “with proven intelligence who are more or less guaranteed a relatively successful future to choose to take their lives”, she said.

“Many students have defined themselves in terms of academic excellence – always been top of their class – so some find it difficult to accept they might be considered average at an IIT,” Professor Vijayakumar explained.

“Others don’t cope well with new-found personal freedom,” continued Professor Vijayakumar, explaining how most will have “come from homes or coaching centres which are very regimented”.

“The majority of students have a very extreme focus so they don’t have a balance in their lives and then some will also find integrating [with others] difficult given the caste and class systems at play,” said Professor Vijayakumar.

Adopting more sympathetic institutional practices could, however, help students to thrive at IITs beyond introducing better mentoring practices or student orientation weeks, she continued.

“Relative grades mean if you score 92 you could still be bottom of the class if everyone else gets 100. Absolute marks would be much better – this is one area that some institutions are starting to change,” said Professor Vijayakumar, who has proposed more than 200 ideas for change at IITs.

“Most importantly, however, there needs to be more openness about this issue rather than trying to brush it under the carpet,” she concluded.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com