No friend in need?

“There are no concepts of friendship in the university, people here believe in individualism. We are frequently unaware of our classmates, roommates and nobody has the time to listen to anybody.” These words of Prameela K.P., a PhD student of Gender Studies at the University Of Hyderabad, sums up the bleak situation in our varsities that have seen a spate of suicides in a year.

One would have thought that students, who often find themselves in these situations, would be each other’s support group to help solve the problem but sadly, that is not the case.

After a classmate of hers took his own life earlier this year, Hafsa, a first Year Medical student at the Kaimeni Institute, feels that there is only so much a friend can do. “Occasionally as friends we do sit down and talk but some people open up while others don’t. My friend was the most cheerful person around, I met him that afternoon and he was still smiling; by night he had hanged himself.”

So, what could possibly stop so many young people from taking their lives?

“If you see the recent trend, most of the students are around or above the age of 25; they are perplexed and upset that they are still studying instead of looking for a job. The pressure of being financially independent is immense. Some aspire for programmes like NET and GRF, which ensures scholarship money at the end of the month. But for those who don’t get proper guidance, there is never any light at the end of the tunnel,” says Faiz Ahmad, a student of EFLU.

He adds, “What we need most is career counselling. A master’s student of literature, history or Science needs to know about his future prospects in the given field. Otherwise what is the point of anything really?”

Faiz elaborates that far from career counselling, even the condition of psychological counselling at EFLU is deplorable. “We have counsellors in the university three days a week for two hours each day, and sometimes they don’t even show up. Should we only get depressed according to their convenience?”

Hafsa feels that belonging to the same age group, one can do only so much to help the other person. “Our college doesn’t  encourage the concept of counselling or having student groups; and as friends we can’t understand our friends’ problems as clearly as an adult could. We will probably end up empathising and wondering what we would do if we were in their place.”

But in government universities where student groups do exist, the situation is equally bleak. Prameela speaks about the discrimination faced by a certain section of the students: “In class, we are often humiliated by faculty for not being well versed in English or not having an ‘academic language,’ it is a difficult atmosphere to survive in.”

“We have class-based groups in classrooms and two groups hardly interact with each other,” she adds.