Where Are We Going Wrong as a Society? Four Suicides, One National Failure

If four children across India die by suicide within weeks—each after months of bullying, humiliation, and ignored pleas for help—then the question is no longer what went wrong in their schools. The question is: where are we going wrong as a society?

We are failing because we treat children’s suffering as exaggeration. We are failing because we glorify “toughness” and dismiss vulnerability. We are failing because we still believe discipline is built through fear, and authority is beyond question—even when the accused are teachers. A society that forces a nine-year-old to beg for help five times in one morning, only to be told to “adjust,” is a society that has lost its moral compass.

We are going wrong because we built schools to chase marks, not to raise emotionally resilient human beings. Because we invested in smart classrooms, but not a single trained counsellor. Because we created systems where a child can write a five-page suicide note describing torture, and adults still ask, “Was it really that serious?” We are going wrong because parents are pressured to stay silent, teachers are rarely held accountable, and institutions are more worried about reputation than saving a child in distress.

We are going wrong because we refuse to teach empathy—as though it is optional. Because we normalise bullying as “kids being kids.” Because we forget that children carry the weight of our cultural indifference on their tiny shoulders until they break.

Where are we going wrong?
Everywhere a child asks for help and is ignored.
Everywhere adults choose authority over compassion.
Everywhere trauma is mislabelled as mischief.
Everywhere silence is easier than intervention.

These four deaths are not isolated tragedies. They are a mirror showing us who we have become—and it is not a society that protects its children. Unless this country urgently rebuilds its entire approach to school culture, mental health, and accountability, we will keep losing more young lives to the toxicity we refuse to confront.

The real crisis is not inside classrooms alone.
It is inside us.