Opinion Death by suicide by a Class-X student in Delhi shows what happens when a young person feels stranded in the very spaces meant to nurture them

It takes a village to raise a child, and between home and school exists a compact to nurture curiosity, offer steady ground when the world grows unkind, and safeguard vulnerability. The death by suicide of a Class X Delhi student lays bare the fragility of that promise. “Sorry mummy, aapka itni baar dil toda, ab last baar todunga…” The heartbreaking note left behind by the 16-year-old — a child allegedly worn down by months of censure and public shaming by teachers — shows what happens when a young person feels stranded in the very spaces in which they are meant to be nourished.

Across India, such tragic stories have become far too frequent. The National Crime Records Bureau registered 13,892 student suicides in 2023, accounting for around 8.1 per cent of the total deaths by suicide in the country. The numbers have grown by 65 per cent over a decade. The surge not only outpaces the national suicide growth rate, it is also a reflection of the unyielding academic stress, growing socio-economic uncertainty, and the increasing cultural pressures the young find themselves mired in — the shrinking space afforded to mistakes and the ever-expanding demands to be perfect or to conform; the inordinate amount of social-media exposure and the loneliness and inarticulation of youth in a world that is ostensibly more connected.

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The school has placed four members of its academic staff under suspension. The Delhi government has set up a high-level probe committee. But the cycle of blame and retribution fails to address the deeper challenges. In classrooms and coaching centres, in family dining rooms and social gatherings, the architecture of young people’s distress is often visible in fragments — independence tamped down as insouciance, silence mistaken for sullenness, perfectionism praised until it calcifies into anxiety. For many adolescents, their interior worlds are crowded with apprehensions they struggle to name. While schools and parents speak the language of care, the grammar of everyday life tells a harsher truth. It is this contradiction that now confronts parents and educators with unprecedented urgency. How does one build environments where ambition does not eclipse well-being, where attention extends beyond performance metrics, where counselling truly creates safe spaces for children to speak up, to falter without fear, where they are seen for who they are? The road ahead lies not only in creating systems that recognise distress early, but in reshaping the cultural impulses that ignore vulnerability. It is time for that deeper work to begin.