The Count the Campus Does Not Keep — Student Suicide and the Institutions That Do Not Report It

Pritiraj BrahmaFounding Partner, Pritiraj & Partners · 2 October 2026

NCRB recorded 13,892 student suicides in 2023, the highest in a decade and 8.1 per cent of all suicides. The figure comes from police records, not from any school, college or coaching centre. The Supreme Court has now made counsellors and mental-health policies binding on every institution. None of them yet has to publish how many students it lost, or what it did about it.

ProvenanceStudent suicide figures are from NCRB’s Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India reports for 2016 to 2023, as reported on release; ADSI 2023 was published on 29 September 2025. A 2024 figure reported in the press is stated separately as reported. Judicial references are the Supreme Court orders of 24 March 2025 (National Task Force) and 25 July 2025 (Sukdeb Saha v. State of Andhra Pradesh), and a later order to higher education institutions as reported by the Supreme Court Observer.

The National Crime Records Bureau recorded 13,892 student suicides in India in 2023, the highest count in a decade and 8.1 per cent of all suicides that year. That number does not come from any school, college, university or coaching centre. It comes from police records, compiled state by state. The institutions where students live and study are not required to count their own losses, publish them, or say what they changed afterwards. The Supreme Court has now made mental-health policies and counsellors binding on all of them. What it has not yet made binding is the one thing that would show whether the policies work: a count kept by the institution itself.

This essay is about institutional design, not about any individual death, and it does not discuss methods. Its subject is a simple asymmetry. When a student dies, the police register a case. The institution where that student studied may issue a statement. The statistical record that results tells the country how many students died and in which state, but not in what kind of institution, at what stage of study, or whether the institution had a counsellor, a grievance channel or a policy at all.

Six findings anchor this analysis:

1. The count has risen for a decade. NCRB’s Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India reports record 9,478 student suicides in 2016, 13,089 in 2021 and 13,892 in 2023, when students accounted for 8.1 per cent of all suicides. The 2023 count was 848 higher than in 2022 and, on reported NCRB figures, 72.9 per cent higher than in 2014. A 2024 figure of 14,488 has been reported in the press from NCRB data; this Review states it as reported and does not rely on it as a finding.
2. It is concentrated, but not only in coaching towns. In 2023 Maharashtra recorded 2,046 student suicides, 14.7 per cent of the national total, followed by Madhya Pradesh with 1,459, Uttar Pradesh with 1,373 and Tamil Nadu with 1,339. Kota is the name the country knows. The numbers say the problem is spread across large states and every type of institution.
3. The record cannot tell a schoolchild from a doctoral student. NCRB’s data identifies students as an occupational category but does not distinguish students in school from those in higher education, let alone by institution type. The most-used national figure therefore cannot be attributed to any part of the education system that could act on it.
4. Where institutions are counted, the count comes from Parliament, not from the institutions. A government reply in the Budget Session of 2023 stated that 103 students in IITs, IIMs, NITs, AIIMS and central universities had died by suicide from 2018 to 3 April 2023. That figure exists because a member asked. No institution is obliged to publish its own figure annually.
5. The joblessness behind the classroom shows up in the same tables. NCRB’s 2023 report records 14,234 suicides among unemployed persons, 8.3 per cent of the total, after 15,783 in 2022. Students and the unemployed together are more than one in six suicides recorded in India. The line between them is the transition from education to work that the companion essays in this Review examine.
6. The duties now exist; the reporting does not. On 24 March 2025 the Supreme Court constituted a National Task Force on student mental health and suicide prevention in higher education. On 25 July 2025, in Sukdeb Saha v. State of Andhra Pradesh, it issued 15 binding guidelines for all educational institutions and coaching centres: a published mental-health policy, a qualified counsellor in every institution with 100 or more students, a ban on segregating students by performance and on public shaming, visible helplines, and state rules for coaching centres within two months. A later order, as reported, directed all 60,383 higher education institutions to clear scholarship dues and fill vacant faculty and administrative posts within four months.

Who is recorded, and who records

The national suicide statistics are built from first information reports filed by police. That is a reasonable way to count deaths. It is a poor way to manage prevention, because the agency that counts has no role in the institution where the risk accumulated. The college that lost a student in March receives no report of how many students it lost over five years, how that compares with similar colleges, or whether its counsellor post was filled.

The Supreme Court’s own reasoning points at the gap. In its later order the Court reproduced the Task Force’s finding that in the 15 to 29 age group, suicide is the second-highest cause of death among men and the highest among women. It then turned, notably, to scholarships and vacancies: the material conditions of student life. That is an institutional diagnosis. It requires institutional data to follow it.

Where the pressure comes from

NCRB attributes a share of student suicides to failure in examinations, alongside family problems and other causes. The cause recorded by police is a single line and should not be over-read. But the institutional pattern is clear enough. Students are concentrated in examination-driven environments, whether a coaching centre, a hostel or a professional college, where performance is ranked, sometimes publicly, and where the next step in life depends on one result. The Court’s ban on segregating batches by performance is a direct response to a practice that was common and visible.

Behind the examination sits the job market. A student who believes that one examination is the only route to secure work, and who knows the queue for that work is long, is under a pressure that no counsellor alone can relieve. That is why this essay sits beside the Review’s essays on graduate unemployment and recruitment examinations: the classroom carries the weight of what happens after it.

What the July 2025 guidelines change

The guidelines are the first nationally binding duties of their kind and they matter. A published mental-health policy, a counsellor in every institution of meaningful size, trained staff, visible helplines and a ban on humiliating practices are the right floor. They apply to coaching centres as well as schools and colleges, which closes a gap the companion essay on venture-funded education identifies.

What the guidelines cannot do on their own is show whether they are followed. A duty to appoint a counsellor is met when a name is on a notice board. Whether that counsellor sees students, how many, and whether anything changed, is not reported anywhere. The UGC’s experience with student ombudspersons, examined in this Review, showed that compliance moved only once non-compliance was published. The same discipline is missing here.

The counter-case

There are serious reasons to be careful about institutional reporting. Publishing suicide counts by institution could stigmatise colleges that serve vulnerable students, push institutions to under-record, and, if reported carelessly, cause harm. Suicide has many causes, many outside any institution’s control, and a rising count can reflect better recording as much as rising risk. On this view the right response is services, not statistics, and the guidelines already provide them.

These concerns are real and should shape how data is published: aggregated, with small numbers suppressed, and alongside service measures rather than as a league table. But the alternative is the present position, in which the most important number is known only at state level and the institution that could act on it never sees its own. Services that are never measured cannot be improved. The aim is not to rank institutions by deaths. It is to make every institution know, and answer for, what it provides.

What we would do

1. Make every institution above 100 students file an annual wellbeing return. Counsellor posts sanctioned and filled, students seen, referrals made, and grievances received on ragging, discrimination and harassment, filed with the relevant regulator and published in aggregate. The duty to appoint already exists under the July 2025 guidelines; the return makes it visible.
2. Add institution type to the national record. NCRB, working with the Ministry of Education, should classify student suicides by stage of education and type of institution, including coaching centres, with small numbers suppressed. That one change would make the national figure usable by the system that has to respond.
3. Publish the National Task Force’s findings in full, with a response timetable. Every recommendation should carry a named owner and a date, and the Ministry should report progress to Parliament annually.
4. Track compliance with the coaching-centre rules by state. The Court directed states to notify rules within two months of July 2025. A public tracker should show which states have done so, how many centres are registered, and how many have a counsellor.
5. Pay what is owed. Scholarship arrears and faculty vacancies are the material conditions the Court itself identified. Publish, institution by institution, the scholarship dues outstanding and the vacancy rate, and report against the four-month deadline the Court set.

The most important number in this essay is one no institution was asked to produce. Until the campus keeps its own count, every policy written for it will be judged by statements rather than results. Politics is the promise. Governance is the delivery. For students, delivery is an institution that knows what it is responsible for, and says so.

If you or someone you know is in distress, Tele-MANAS, the national mental-health helpline, is available free at 14416 or 1-800-891-4416.

Companion essay. The same question, approached from the other side: The Hope That Was Priced In — What Venture Capital Did, and Did Not Do, to Indian Education.