Another Kota suicide sounds alarm as deaths continue despite panels, measures, guidelines

In August 2023, panicked by a surging number of suicides in Kota, the Rajasthan town which has become the centre of India’s test-prep coaching centre business, the district administration ordered that all ceiling fans in hostels and paying guest accommodations must be covered with an “anti-suicide device”. A month later, more comprehensive guidelines followed, including mandatory classes for teachers, and regular flying checks of coaching centres and hostels by the district administration. Yet, six months after these measures were put in place, suicides in Kota have continued, with another student dying on Wednesday night.

According to data from the Rajasthan Police, 15 students died by suicide in 2022, and the number peaked alarmingly in 2023, reaching 27 through the year — the highest since such deaths have been recorded from 2015 onwards. Now, Wednesday night’s suicide takes the 2024 tally up to seven in the first three months of 2024, with three suicides recorded in March alone — keeping pace with last year’s number. This comes one day after a 20-year-old NEET aspirant from Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh, was found dead at his rented accommodation in the Vigyan Vihar area.

The station house officer (SHO) at Jawahar Nagar police station, Kamalesh Kumar, said that the 20-year-old woman who died on Wednesday lived in a paying guest accommodation, and was in Kota for over a year preparing for the pre-medical entrance test NEET. “The incident came to light when her neighbours found that she did not come out of her room to take the lunch and dinner boxes the entire day. Her landlord found the body when they broke open the door. No suicide note has been recovered from the spot and her parents have been informed. The body has been sent to the Kota MBS hospital and a medical board has been formed for an autopsy,” Kumar said.

The officer also said that they were investigating why the hostel had not installed spring-loaded fans as per the district administration guidelines. “A probe against the hostel authorities will be initiated once the police submit a report to the district collector in this regard,” he added.

Kota is the centre of India’s test-prep business, estimated to be worth ₹10,000 crore annually by officials in the district administration. Students from across the country arrive in the city and register in tuition centres that offer courses that prepare students for competitive examinations such as NEET and Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for engineering colleges. But over the years, even if some students have found success, there is ample evidence that many find the grind stressful, living pidgeon-holed in hostels and paying guest accommodations that have mushroomed across the city.

Experts have said these students — many of them out of their homes for the first time — find the workload stressful, and the pressure from peers, parents and teachers unbearable.

Amid the surge in suicides in 2023, the district administration ordered all hostels to install spring-loaded fans to “provide students mental support and security”, promising extensive monitoring. But since the day this order was issued, at least five students have died by suicide by hanging themselves.

HT reached out to two of these five hostels on Wednesday, and both said that they received no visit from an official team before the deaths in their institutions. A director of a Mahaveer Nagar hostel in which a Chhattisgarh-based JEE aspirant died on February 13 said, “No official ever visited our hostel before the suicide. But we were arranging the set-up to install the anti-suicide device when the student died.” The hostel was sealed on February 16 for breach of guidelines.

On September 28 last year, the Rajasthan government rolled out a series of measures to prevent suicides — mandatory screening test for incoming students, alphabetical sorting into sections instead of ranking-based divisions, and regular checks of hostel accommodations. This February, the district administration set up a nine-member team to monitor the execution of guidelines in hostels and other rented accommodations following concerns that they were not being taken seriously. “In all the five cases of suicides (between September 2023 and February 2024), the absence of anti-suicide device is a common issue. The hostel staff also do not participate in mandatory gate-keeping sessions regularly. Our nine member team will visit hostels and PG’s everyday and prepare a detailed report,” Sunita Daga, the nodal officer of the team said at the time.

On Wednesday, Daga told HT that only half of the survey work was complete so far. “50% of the survey work is completed which has been conducted across hostels and PG’s. Our team is trying to cover every place. Once it is completed we will discuss our findings with the collector and take further action,” she said.

ADM Mukesh Choudhary said that another issue confronting the administration was that not every hostel that offered students places to live is registered, which makes them difficult to track. “We are trying to address this issue and talks are underway with other officials. But necessary action will be taken against each of them found violating the guidelines.”

Experts, however, said that a primary problem was that government was approaching the problem “mechanically.” “This is a situation that requires much more than just guidelines,” sociologist Rajeev Gupta said. “The need of the hour is a multidimensional psychological counselling of students.”