No. ALL is not well!

Ritam Mondal’s recent suicide is not the first tragic case. On January 12, this year, Shaon Malik, a third-year electrical engineering student, died by suicide. On April 20, Aniket Walker, a final-year Ocean Engineering student from Maharashtra, died by suicide in JC Bose Hall. On May 4, Mohammad Asif Qamar, a third-year BTech student from Bihar, was found dead in his room at Madan Mohan Malviya Hall.

By Raju Mansukhani

When eyes are moist and the heart is filled with grief and disbelief, it is so difficult to chuckle and recall "Aal ij weaiell" (All is well) – the deadpan comic clarion call of Ranchodas Shyamaldas Chhanchhad (the character played by Aamir Khan in the film 3 Idiots). The phrase was the lovable Rancho's life-line to safety, security and stabilizing himself as he continuously faced dramatic, ridiculous or traumatic situations in the blockbuster film that took Indians (and a huge global audience) headlong into corridors and classrooms of an engineering college, its pressure-cooker environment and the breathless, relentless academic race of every student.

Reading a recent report filed by PTI, and published in leading newspapers, including The Hindu, which stated that IIT Kharagpur in West Bengal, is considering installing ‘smaller ceiling fans’ in hostel rooms to make them unusable for self-harm, brought back those clouds of horrible disbelief and grief.

The IIT Kharagpur officialdom’s move comes in the wake of multiple student ‘deaths by suicide’ on the campus this year, sparking concern over mental health and emotional well-being among hostel residents in this institution of higher learning in India with a distinguished academic and professional record. 

Before sharing the tearful and gory details of youngsters who succeeded in committing suicide at the ever-so-prestigious IIT Kharagpur, the first of the engineering institutions to be set up in India in 1951, director Suman Chakraborty’s words are worth pondering over: "Apart from taking steps like reaching out to students on campus 24x7, interaction with parents of boarders every alternate month and 'campus mothers' programme (where women faculty and staff members serve as emotional mentors for students), and having permanent psychiatrists, we are also exploring steps like scaling down the size of ceiling fans so that it cannot be used for any other purpose. This is not an alternative to addressing mental health issues. But, to avoid certain situations triggered by sudden impulses to self-destruct oneself, when none may be around, during certain moments."

He added that the presence or absence of tools to cause self-harm can make a crucial difference in critical moments, especially when backed by counselling and emotional support.

To a question, the director said, "We are mulling to replace fans of all the 21 hostels, housing around 16,000 students, with smaller ones, in phases. So can't give a timeline immediately."

The institute has also installed bar codes on the gates of every hostel room where the helpline number of counselling services can be scanned by a student in emotional stress at any hour.

A 10-member fact-finding team has been formed by the premier institute to explore the circumstances and factors that led to the death of fourth-year BTech student Ritam Mondal on July 18, 2025. 

Now more gory facts may roll in: Mondal, a 21-year-old Mechanical Engineering student, had returned to campus on July 15, a day after the convocation, following a two-month vacation. On January 12, this year, Shaon Malik, a third-year electrical engineering student, died by suicide. On April 20, Aniket Walker, a final-year Ocean Engineering student from Maharashtra, died by suicide in JC Bose Hall. On May 4, Mohammad Asif Qamar, a third-year BTech student from Bihar, was found dead in his room at Madan Mohan Malviya Hall.

Quite clearly "Aal ij NOT waiell!" at IIT Kharagpur, and scores of other IITs and regional engineering colleges.

It is the longest-known public secret that students routinely commit suicide in various campuses: often drowning in the swimming pool, which, incidentally, and ironically,  then, is drained dry for a few months to ensure that no more hard-working, brilliant, aspirational, theorem-mugging, equation-juggling, midnight oil-burning students, can take this tragic watery route to their death at such a young age; while a future of great possibilities wait for them. 

Leaving 3 Idiots aside for the moment, the issue of students' suicide is idiopathic, and idio-pathetic, if one can coin a new word as an epitaph for these young, snuffed out lives who were living in hostels named after Indian legends like JC Bose and Pt. Madan Mohan Malviya, for whom knowledge through education was not merely a formal exercise in acquiring academic degrees and a job, it was a continuing drama of pure joy and enlightenment, unfolding before their own eyes, as they experienced the macro and micro details of their syllabi.

Life for these iconic scientists-educationists was to live fully and fulfilled, day after day; learning was a free-flowing passion which made them build institutions that have endured centuries. Moral progress, character-building of every student was integral to their vision of building a new nation brick by brick, student by student. 

Come to think of it how would the honourable Bose Babu or the Mahamana Malviya ji have reacted if director Suman Chakraborty’s office order had reached their tables: would they have looked heaven-wards and calculated the size of the ceiling fans? 

Symbolic of changes: Nehru 

The first IIT of India at Kharagpur stands on the site of the former prison of Hijli, dating back to the British Raj. In the institute's first convocation address, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru spoke of the location's symbolic value.

"Here in the place of that Hijli detention camp stands this fine monument of India," he pointed out. "This picture seems to me symbolic of changes that are coming to India."

He went on to laud the engineer as the world's new nation-builder. "Now you are engineers," he proclaimed, "and this world today...takes shape more and more under the hands of engineers."

For Nehru, it was appropriate that the engineer had superseded the administrator as the primary agent of governance and development. Administrators had always played an important role, he admitted. However, "the time has now come when the engineer plays an infinitely greater role than anybody else." 

In fact, he predicted that the division between administrator and engineer would gradually fade away "because the major work of the country today deals with...engineering schemes of various types. We are building up a new India and the administrator, who is completely ignorant of engineering, does not help much in administering."

This was already true of more technologically developed countries, where "engineers and scientists play a far more important role even outside their sphere of engineering and science." Given the precedent they had set, Nehru concluded, "that is bound to happen in India."

Time now to delve into The NCRB Suicide in India 2022 Report: Key Time Trends and Implications which can be accessed from the Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine. (NCRB stands for National Crime Records Bureau and is located in New Delhi). Significantly, the NCRB report states:

Another area of concern is the persistently elevated rate of suicide among students over the years 2017–2022, with numbers remaining consistently high (7.6% in 2017, 8.2% in 2020, 8% in 2021, and 7.6% in 2022). Failure in examination was the reported reason for suicide in 1.2% of students…

“Pertinently, suicide clusters have been reported in Kota, Thrissur, and Chennai (Rakasthan, Kerala, Tamil Nadu); all these cities are famous for their coaching institutes targeting competitive professional examinations. Promoting resilience to failure and frustration is crucial for preventing suicide among students, as is addressing issues such as peer pressure, family expectations, and poor coping skills. Media plays a vital role in suicide prevention, and responsible media suicide reporting is necessary to avoid the ‘Werther Effect’.”

For those who are foxed by the Werther Effect, here's the explanation from a UK-based website called suicidebereavementuk.com:

A well-documented phenomenon around the world, the Werther Effect refers to the identified rise in suicide rates following well-publicised reports of deaths by suicide of celebrities or other well-known figures in the media. The term was coined following the publication of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, which tells the story of a romantic infatuation that ends in suicide. The book helped to put German literature on the map, with translations in both French and English. Werther’s costume of tall boots, trousers, a yellow waistcoat and blue tailcoat was soon the height of fashion and merchandising based on the book was soon being produced, including decorative porcelain, fans, perfumes and silhouettes.

With novels being the most emotive medium of the late 18th century, the impact of the book cannot be underestimated – and it is possible that it was associated with a rise in suicides among those in similar situations to the novel’s protagonist. The Lancet quotes Goethe himself as saying: “My friends … thought that they must transform poetry into reality, imitate a novel like this in real life and, in any case, shoot themselves, and what occurred at first among a few took place later among the general public.”

Although this apparent rise in suicide mimicry was never conclusively proven, further studies conducted over the years suggest that the suicide contagion does exist.

In fact, it has been such an identifiable trend that it has led to new media guidelines about how to report on suicide responsibly, covering everything from the words and phrases used to image use and descriptions, with the aim being to reduce the risks of media coverage having a negative impact on potentially vulnerable people.

The first scientific use of the phrase ‘Werther Effect’ was by David Philipps in 1974, in his pioneering study investigating the influence of suggestion on suicide. It was found that, between 1947 and 1968, suicides increased immediately after publication of a death by suicide in newspapers in Britain and the US. This increase was found to be restricted mainly to the region in which the news story was circulated.

Interestingly, however, changing the nature of media reporting on suicides could actually serve to reduce the suicide rate – something known as the Papageno Effect. By presenting those at risk of death by suicide with successful coping stories and strategies, as well as making mention of mental health services, it could see (suicide) rates reduce. Understanding more about the Werther Effect could help healthcare professionals working in suicide prevention, especially those who come into contact with those bereaved or affected by suicide. 

Finally, the preferred means of suicide in India are changing, reports the NCRB. The proportion of suicides by hanging increased from 49.8% to 58.2%; in contrast, suicides by chemical poisoning declined from 27.5% to 25.4% from 2017 to 2022. 

Limiting access to lethal means is an evidence-based suicide prevention strategy. While ‘means restriction’ is relatively more challenging to apply for hanging; specific steps such as removing or minimizing ligature points and the use of suicide-proof architecture in controlled environments such as schools, hospitals, campuses, and prisons, may be considered.

Meaningful Contributions to Society 

Just a couple of hours’ drive from Kharagpur is Shantiniketan where Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore made real his global and non-conformist vision of education, the holistic emotional, aesthetic and intellectual development of students, and their meaningful contributions to society -- at all times. It does seem like a massive contra-distinction when referring to the voluminous works of Gurudev and Sri Aurobindo, who were looking at the boundless nature of the human soul, and not, to put it crudely, the size of ceiling fans. 

"A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it,” is one of Gurudev’s oft-quoted thoughts as he kept emphasizing that an all-encompassing approach was essential to integrate a student’s intellectual, emotional, and physical development. For Tagore, the purpose of education was to cultivate an individual who was balanced, self-aware, and capable of contributing meaningfully to society. 

The global netizens today often bauk when hearing Tagore describing education as a process of “self-realization,” where the individual becomes more in tune with the inner self, as well as the world around them. There is intimate personal engagement, and creative social engagement.

This idea of self-realization was fundamental to Tagore’s educational approach, emphasizing that knowledge should lead to the creation of a free, independent, and empathetic individuals.

In other words, education was not merely about passing exams or memorizing information—it was about growing into fully integrated human beings, capable of both intellectual and emotional intelligence.

Sri Aurobindo’s writings, speeches and life over six decades were a testimony that education should be in accordance with the needs and reality of our modern life. In other words, education should create dynamic citizens so that they are able to meet the needs of a modern, complex life.

According to him, physical development and holiness are the chief aims of education. As such, he not only emphasized mere physical development, but physical purity also without which no spiritual development is possible. In this sense physical development and inner purity are the two bases on which spiritual development is built. 

The second important aim of education, wrote Sri Aurobindo, is to train all the senses -- hearing, speaking, listening, touching, smelling and tasting. According to him, these senses can be fully trained when the nerve, ‘chitta’ and ‘manas’ are pure. Hence, through education and enlightenment, the purity of senses is to be achieved -- before any tangible development is possible.

The third aim of education is to achieve mental development of the child/student/young person. This mental development means the enhancement of all mental faculties’ namely -- memory, thinking, reasoning, imagination.

Education should develop children youngsters fully and harmoniously.

Another important aim of education is the development of morality. Sri Aurobindo emphasis on moral and emotional development has greater bearing and meaning today. He emphasized that without moral and emotional development, mental development becomes harmful to the growing process.

The heart of a child should be so developed as to show love, empathy, compassion, and consideration for all living beings. This is real moral, intellectual and aesthetic development; this is where, at least on the silver screen, Ranchodas Shyamaldas Chhanchhad made his mark, leaving his audiences teary-eyed.

Today, tragically, we are left in the real world, to bless the departed and tortured, young and brilliant souls of IIT Kharagpur (and in other campuses) with prayers for peace.  Hoping ardently, that the young would live, live fully and happily, fulfill their dreams and aspirations, and make the world a better place.

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Raju Mansukhani is a researcher-writer on history and heritage issues; contributing columns and features in leading Indian and foreign newspapers and portals. He is based in Gurgaon.