We are experiencing quite frequently that intelligent IIT students are committing suicide even there are psychological counselling center, mentor and other measure taken by the authority. What else can be done to address this issue that is bothering us?

Question is, are we educating or qualifying students to appear in job interview? Present academic curricula are mostly job oriented not joy instigated. Students choose stream as per salary/ job opportunity or as per rank and availability and not as per own knack/ satisfaction. Complex competition and comparison is creating a lot of stress and tension among individuals those who are not able to handle the various pressure that has to be faced in this process.

Primarily, various stress or pressure like peer pressure, purpose pressure, personal pressure, parent pressure, prestige pressure apart from academic and examination pressure are paramount for a student that has to be handled fearlessly in IIT like highly competitive premier institute. If there is no pressure cooker like valve or positive values that can release these pressure time to time, one student can experience burn out and break down. There will be misalignment/ imbalance between individual genetic imprint and social expectations.

‘Success’ is mostly a social term, relative in nature and is mostly mishandled by many. Blindly following the crowd or social expectations, one may eventually be trapped in finance-fame-female/male triangle and may not be able to come out alone easily. And, purpose-peace-principles of life is compromised and not synchronized with life’s natural unfoldment, and thus, prosperity alone is unable to solve the issue. There should be character building approaches along with career developing process.

Psycho-emotional resilience has to be built through right effort and understanding for living a quality life while managing own mental propensities. Facing failures, career/ job uncertainties, poor concentration, peer group jealousy/ criticism, procrastination, isolation, broken affairs, addiction (social media, substance abuse etc.), lacking social support and any other personal shortcomings should be addressed by self-transformative process to arrest suicide or suicidal tendencies.

In ancient age, bramhacharya-garhasthya-banprastha-sanyas along with dharma-artha-kama-mokhsya like social orderly system was prevalent. In modern age, it is reversed with artha-kama-dharma-mokhsya approach. Thus, money or artha is the center or purpose of human life that follows the proverb ‘survival of the fittest with self- interest’ has become the only the goal/ meaning of modern life.

Holisticyog, if introduced in life style, that balances both science and spirituality, peace and prosperity, self and society together holistically, can take care of abovementioned issues and concerns of intelligent student through right understanding and strengthening psycho-emotional resilience. Self-transforming and empowering measures through energization exercise, breathing exercise, general-visual-mindful meditation techniques and conscious relaxation like self reflective methods that improves concentration-confidence-creativity, are very effective and helpful, especially if done willingly. It will definitely reduce the rate of suicide if not completely eradicate due to some unknown factor.