With the world’s
highest youth suicide rate, India’s authorities try to cut the
pressure in school
 In the heart of New
Delhi, students at the Mirambika School start their day by first
helping their teachers tidy up and beautify their classrooms. They
then head for a meditation session to help them “connect their
outer selves with the inner,” according to the school. Only
once these activities are out of the way, do the studies begin.
Similarly, students at
Gurgaon’s Heritage School in north India begin their day with
meditation sessions, sports and a glass of fresh juice. The school
has a yoga and meditation centre that buzzes with activity throughout
the day. Three yogic instructors help students master breath control
and stress.
Indian health
authorities are deeply concerned about stress, particularly revolving
around studies. India was reported in 2004 to have the world’s
highest youth suicide rate, with suicides accounting for 50to 75
percent of all deaths in adolescent girls and about a quarter of all
deaths in boys between the ages of 10 to 19, most commonly by
hanging, followed by poisoning, usually with insecticide.
In Asia overall,
tremendous stress is placed on very young students to succeed and
even exceed academically. In Hong Kong for example there is even a
school operating to prepare two and a half year-old children for
‘interviews’ with what are believed to be the better
kindergartens. Koreans have their famed hagwon, Japan their
juku. Cram schools have become a de facto parallel education
system across much of the region, with large numbers of students
spending as much as 18 to 20 hours a day attending school or in
extracurricular studies.
In India, however,
stress is plaguing students to such an extent that it has started
killing them. Parental pressure and rising ambitions are brewing a
deadly cocktail for young minds to the point where, according to
India’s Ministry of Health, more than 16,000 Indian students
have committed suicide in the last three years. While 5,857 students
killed themselves in 2006, the figure for 2007 was 6,008. Tragically,
the numbers for 2008 are expected to be even higher.
During exam time in
March — and in June when results are declared — newspapers and TV
footage are replete with reports of youngsters attempting suicide
over their inability to cope with academic pressure. It is fairly
common at these times for student help lines to be inundated with
distress calls.
“Most students
call in to share their fears about exams and parental pressure.
However, a few also call in to say that they’ve got suicide on
their mind,” said a volunteer at Sanjeevni, a New Delhi-based
help line service. In March this year, the volunteer said, one youth
even called in to ask where he could buy a pistol to shoot his mother
for pressuring him.
“Given our
education system, Indian students face tremendous stress and
competition. While we can’t do much to change government
policy, we can certainly try and help students cope better with
external pressures,” says Kirti Reddy, a teacher at Bal Bharati
International School. The school recently joined with a Delhi-based
theatre company to help students get involved in stage performances.
“Theatre is a wonderful de-stressor and is very cathartic. Our
students have found it to be very relaxing,” Reddy says.
Like Mirambika and
Heritage, many other Indian schools are trying hard to control stress
and anxiety among their students through a smorgasbord of activities.
Some factor in “creative” hours in the curriculum, others
invite foreign experts to hold interactive sessions with parents and
students, while still others tap into Indian techniques like yoga,
meditation, pranik healing and breath control. All of this is
designed to help de-stress young minds. Recently, the Union Health
and Family Welfare Ministry even urged the Union Human Resource
Development Ministry to make yoga a compulsory subject in all
government schools.
Some private schools
are also employing counselors. Experts from various fields like
psychology, medicine and management are also being invited to conduct
interactive sessions at schools to help parents and students discuss
and make decisions about career choices or behavioral problems. The
Planetary Peace Movement Trust, a global non-governmental
organization (NGO) has also been introducing sessions of meditation,
physical exercises, deep abdominal breathing and chanting of `Om’
in numerous schools.
Officials at the World
Health Organization say a multifaceted strategy is necessary to help
Indian students tackle anxiety,
depression, stress and suicidal tendencies.
"The Indian
education system needs a total revamp. It lays too much emphasis on
rote learning and marks, discounting personality development,”
says an Indian educationist associated with the WHO.
According to clinical
psychologist Vikas Purohit, parental expectations play a big part in
pushing their children to the brink – and thus the 10-year-old
who wanted to shoot his mother. This scenario is aggravated by the
changing dynamics of an Indian family – particularly the death
of the joint family system – which means that there are fewer
family elders around to counsel the young ones. With both parents
working and nobody at home to turn to, it is easy for young people to
become depressed, a feeling which all too often ends in suicide.
In fact a study
conducted by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of
India's Social Development Foundation, titled 'Plight of Working
Parents Towards their Children', released a few years ago, concluded
from a sample of 3,000 working couples that Indian parents who work
full time spend only 30 minutes a day with their children.
Apart from these
factors, says Delhi-based educationist Geet Oberoi, the chief
executive officer of Orkids, an organization that works with
handicapped children, the pressure of the Indian education system on
a young mind is such that it breeds insecurity. “Even if you
get full marks, you’re still not secure enough about getting a
seat in a good college. There’s always somebody lurking round
the corner, feel students, ready to grab their seat,” Oberoi
says.
This is largely because
there is too much pressure and too few resources. About 70 percent of
India’s 1.1 billion population is under 30, a sizeable chunk of
them students. This year, over 130,000 students appeared for Class X
and XII Board exams conducted by the Central Board of Secondary
Education, compared with 120,000 last year.
These numbers created a
mad scramble for the limited number of seats available at topnotch
engineering/medical/MBA colleges across the country. For
undergraduate B.Tech and M.Tech programs offered through the joint
entrance examination, for instance, around 350,000 students competed
for just 5,000 seats.
Similarly, for
blue-chip Indian Institute of Management outfits, only 1,200 students
out of a pool of about 250,000 get seats each year. This makes the
exam even more selective than all the top US business schools put
together. In fact the overall acceptance rate at IIM ranges from 0.1
to 0.4 per cent compared with acceptance of around 5 to 10 percent in
the top US schools.
Analysts have often
criticized the Indian government’s frugal expenditure on
education. According to the Kothari Commission, established in 1966,
education expenditure should be a minimum of 6 percent of GDP.
However, India’s current figure hovers around 4 percent, far
less than Saudi Arabia which invests 9.5 percent and Norway,
Malaysia, France and South Africa all of which spend in excess of
five per cent.
Given this scenario,
the measures taken by the schools such as the Mirambika School will
obviously be welcome.
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