For other higher education institutions across India, the HRD ministry is planning to involve over 300 counsellors for an online mechanism
The Centre has asked all 23 IITs to set up wellness centres and engage professional counsellors to help students cope with the high-pressure environment, The Print reports, quoting unidentified officials. For non-IIT colleges, the government has proposed an online platform staffed with up to 300 counsellors.
The scheme, part of a larger plan to check student suicides in higher education institutes, is likely to be rolled out by November. India saw nearly 26,500 student suicides between 2014 and 2016, with 26 pupils taking their lives every day in 2016.
A number of IITs — Delhi, Mumbai and Madras for example — currently have wellness centres. But the ministry has now mandated this for all the 23 IITs, including the new ones.
Recently Times Of India had reported on Jul 3, 2019, one more suicide at IIT-Hyderabad, “2nd year Master’s student committed suicide. One more suicide in the same year, 4 months back, a 3rd-year student jumped off the 7 storey hostel building.”
Fear of failure leads to one more bad news, why to build such pressure on young minds, let them flourish. We as a society need to accept failure as part of the journey, failure is nothing but just a stepping stone, says Amit Gupta, Founder & CEO at NCR Eduservices.
To enable students in the high-pressure environment of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the ministry has asked all IITs to open wellness centres and seek the services of professional counsellors on a mandatory basis, said a senior ministry official.
