While it is common for students to experience stress as they prepare for various kinds of exams and tests, regular or competitive, the way they respond to ‘failure’ seems to vary, depending on diverse contexts and cultures. Citing National Crime Records Bureau, Syed Naseer Hussain, a Member of Parliament, stated that ‘India recorded 13,044 student suicides in 2022.’ That may be the extreme, in the context of Covid, but the number of students who end their lives every year is no less alarming. Usually, suicides by students capture media attention for a while and then fade away. However, this year they made headlines, and, for a long time, made space for millions to express their anger and to participate in public protests. In response to the many ills that have been plaguing the nation’s education system, a students’ movement, named Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), was born in May 2026.
Exposing various corrupt practices that have been destroying the education system, very particularly the way that competitive exams are held, the CJP has called for protests across the country and demanded the resignation of the nation’s education minister. Under mounting pressure, the minister did resign (unheard of under the current regime) and a committee was formed to look into the flaws in the way competitive exams are conducted and how to make them foolproof.
Annually, millions of students in India study and graduate from schools, colleges and universities. While a significant number of students fail exams at this stage itself, many succeed and move ahead, looking for jobs or to pursue specialized/higher studies. Based on the skills they possess, some join the informal sector (where the pay is meagre) but a vast majority of students prepare themselves to face various types of competitive exams. Such exams are conducted so that a) they can be selected to study at medical or engineering or business or law or other schools, or b) get government jobs (these posts/jobs can be modest or highly prestigious and well remunerated).
A significant problem with the competitive exams in the country is the enormous difference between the number of seats/posts/jobs available and the number of applicants. Let me give an example that D. Shyam Babu references in an essay titled ‘99% Unlucky Young Indians,’ published in The Times of India on August 4, 2026: “Consider that in 2023-24, for 7,999 jobs in 22 central civil and defences services, a total of 1, 508, 430 candidates attended the examinations. That amounts to a mere 0.5 success rate, which effectively renders the rest of candidates, the overwhelming 99.5%, meritless.” Babu concludes that “most of our educated youth will not get jobs that satisfy their aspirations.” A small section of them may get other jobs eventually but the point is clear: millions across the country, a large majority of them poor, are likely to remain jobless!
Hoping that they would be lucky next time, millions continue to prepare for these exams. They bring enormous stress to students and their parents apart from the financial burden. Each time students fail to cross the cut-off-mark or get the required rank, they think that the problem is with them, that they didn’t prepare well rather than seeing the system as defective, and imaginatively deceptive. Exam paper leaks (individuals and institutions are involved in this: it gives an advantage to the students who knew the exam papers in advance) have angered and shook the nation. The call for a major change is born of anger and frustration.
That they could not get the rank they hoped for impacts students in a big way. Anger and shame could turn outward or inward: sadness, disappointment, frustration etc., can make them disoriented and violent, or alternately, lead them into depression and, in some extreme cases, they decide to end their lives. In most instances, students who wrote notes before committing suicide stated: they were sorry to disappointing their parents who had great hopes on them and who had spent much for them; and that they could not cope with the stress, etc.
That life is precious and that failure to obtain the hoped-for-rank is not the reason to end a precious life is evident and all talk about it. Generally, people hope and expect families and communities, educational institutions and government to look into the issue. More than many others, the Catholic Church, particularly the several thousand Catholic educational centres that it operates -be they schools or colleges or universities or other allied institutions- are in a position to bring this issue into focus and generate a public discourse.
Normally, students and parents come with great hopes when they seek admission in a Catholic school or college. The hope is that the students will learn discipline, work hard and come up in life. The values and virtues students pick up will vary depending on many other factors but the Catholic institutions can play a vital role in this aspect as well.
At a Catholic institution students are taught to dream high, try to excel, and be nothing less than a winner. They are also taught to be kind and caring and try to be persons of integrity and responsibility. All these and many other values are cultivated at the Catholic centres (it is possible that students may pick up all these at other centres as well, but that is beside the point). The issue is how do Catholic educational schools help students to face pain and disappointment, frustration and failure that they will encounter in their lives? It is not to condone the failures that exist in the Indian education system. Reforms in order to make things better, objective and fair is not an option. It is mandatory for any nation that aspires to develop to do the best and get the best out of its students, its youth.
Millions of students, whether they step out of Catholic schools or other centres, will certainly face an uncertain and bleak future. Currently, unemployment is at its high, and with such a large population, and with poor planning at the level of governance, millions of students will have to accept the fact that they will not be able to get what they hope and aspire for -be they jobs or the opportunities to study. The point is, how will they and their parents face this reality?
It is imperative that the Catholic Church in India discuss this topic, dialoguing with all stakeholders such as parents, well-wishers, counsellors and spiritual guides, so that together they can come up with viable proposals that can save young lives. Suicide is a taboo topic, but it needs to be changed. Everyone’s life is precious, and a student’s life is even more precious. All that can be done, ought to be done, so that students don’t take away their lives but instead become builders of their lives and of the larger human family. The nation’s Catholic institutions with qualified personnel and infrastructure are in an advantageous position to initiate conversations on exam-related stress and what kind of guidance will energise students to both wrestle with failures and embrace success.