IITs, mindfulness & mirage of mental health

THE IIT-Kanpur has recently collaborated with The Art of Living Foundation to establish a wellness programme. The foundation, as it is reported, has agreed to conduct a series of specialist sessions incorporating breathing exercises, mindfulness practices and meditation. And this is to improve the 'mental resilience, and stress management capabilities' of young students.

I understand why the IIT authorities are deeply concerned about the mental health of their students. A recent RTI query has revealed that in the past five years, 37 students died by suicide across 11 of the 23 IITs. It is, therefore, not surprising that even the IIT-Guwahati has announced a series of healing practices —say, counselling sessions, morning walks with faculty members and 'stress-escape' workshops.

However, as a keen observer of the contemporary educational landscape in India, I have no hesitation in saying that a set of discrete counselling sessions, breathing exercises and mindfulness practices are inadequate to cope with the heightened psychic anxiety and existential anguish of these young minds who are trapped in a 'war zone' characterised by the life-killing virus of hyper-competitiveness and social Darwinism.

The problem is not just one's 'disturbed' self; the problem is the very structure of society — its scarcity of resources and unevenness, or the reduction of education into an ideology of meritocracy: a rat race for achieving what techno-capitalists regard as 'success'. You cannot dissociate your 'disturbed' self from the neurosis of the larger society.

Think of the three reasons why mental stress or loneliness is inherent in the very logic of the IIT phenomenon.

First, if you really keep your eyes open, you realise that the very process of getting admission into one of the IITs is inherently tension-ridden. It is not like walking with a great teacher and exploring the domains of science and mathematics with heightened intellectual zeal and curiosity.

Instead, from the tyranny of coaching centres to the never-ending mock tests: there is no creative ecstasy or joy in this journey. By the time the 'lucky' ones pass through the obstacles — from JEE Main to JEE Advanced, many of them are already psychologically wounded and spiritually impoverished.

Second, it is wrong to believe that life is really 'settled', and everything becomes rosy when one joins one of the IITs. There is no end to the stress inherent in the hyper-competitive academic culture. The craving for good grades, the pressure to learn the ever-changing 'skills' the market demands and the constant anxiety over the ultimate destiny — say, appropriate placement and salary package, create a social milieu in which there is no friendship, no creative ecstasy. Everyone is a solitary, egotistic warrior!

And third, as the IITs are over-hyped in a society in which most of our colleges and universities have been systematically devalued or destroyed, it becomes exceedingly difficult for an IITian to escape the public gaze.

We begin to see an IITian as a mythical product: a super-intelligent technologist achieving everything we love to mythologise as 'success': a lucrative job, a high position in a techno-corporate enterprise, frequent foreign trips and ceaseless social and economic mobility!

In fact, in our society madly obsessed with 'success stories', if you are an IITian, it is quite unlikely that people — including your parents — will see you as just human; you have to continually prove your 'superhuman' qualities. Your 'ordinariness', it seems, is your sin! Indeed, this impossible expectation tends to dehumanise many of them.

It is, therefore, obvious that if we do not address these issues, we cannot bring sanity among these young, lonely, tension-ridden competitors simply by asking them to meditate, do breathing exercises and practice mindfulness. Even if it gives some sort of temporary relief — a 'feel good' moment, no fundamental change is likely to take place in their life-trajectories.

Well, I am not saying that the practice of mindfulness is unimportant. In fact, I give tremendous importance to what Thich Nhat Hant taught us through his path-breaking text The Miracle of Mindfulness. Yes, the ability to live deeply and intensely in the present moment without being disturbed by the trauma of the past and the worry of the future is a great meditative art. Possibly, as this Buddhist monk's own life-trajectory indicates, it needs the spirit of engaged religiosity — the constant quest for peace, loving kindness and compassion.

However, the irony is that with the rapid growth of the 'spiritual supermarket' in our times, even a profound lesson of mindfulness has been trivialised and marketed as a product for instant redemption.

Moreover, this spiritual industry does not ask yet another important question: mindfulness for what? Do I need to practise mindfulness in order to intensify my corporate greed? Do I need to practise mindfulness in order to become a 'topper' in my university? Or, do I need mindfulness in order to be free and relaxed without the burden of the ego?

In fact, with the accelerated growth of the business of the spiritual supermarket, we see the proliferation of enormously wealthy celebrity babas and gurus selling diverse packages of instant 'salvation' to their rich clients — from corporate bosses to all those who can afford to pay for, say, a seven-day retreat for doing breathing exercises and practising mindfulness.

Hence, I have no hesitation in articulating my discomfort with the alliance between the Kanpur IIT and the spiritual industry.

If we are really sincere about the mental health of young students, we need to question the very structure of the society we are living in. Moreover, we need to redefine education, rescue its soul from a purely meritocratic, technocratic ideology, and give a new vision of life to our students — beyond naked careerism, hyper-competitiveness and material success.