In a heart-wrenching incident, a student of Delhi's prestigious Lady Shri Ram College for Women died by suicide last week at her residence in Telangana due to financial problems in the family badly hit by COVID-19 induced lockdown, she wrote in a purported suicide note.
Aishwarya Reddy, a second-year mathematics honours student, said in the suicide note that her education was putting a financial burden on the family which had to sell their one-room house in Hyderabad to keep it afloat.
Her father is a motorcycle mechanic in Ranga Reddy district and her mother is a tailor.
"My family had to bear a lot of expenses because of me. I am a burden on them. But I can't live without being able to pursue my education," Aishwarya wrote in the purported suicide note.
I have been giving this much thought and felt death is the right thing for me. People may try and find deplorable reasons for my death. But I know I am not doing anything wrong.
Before taking the extreme step, Aishwarya called upon the authorities to make sure that the Ministry of Science and Technology's INSPIRE scholarship is given to the students for at least a year. She was a recipient of the scholarship.
"Please forgive me. I am not a good daughter," Aishwarya, who according to his father, wanted to be an IAS officer.
No money for even a second-hand laptop
According to a report in Indian Express, her father said that the family couldn't even buy her a second-hand laptop to pursue online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Aishwarya hanged herself at her house in Shadnagar on November 2, according to the police.
Her father Srinivas Reddy said that when she got admission to the prestigious Delhi college last year, he had mortgaged their one-bedroom house for Rs 2 lakh. The family is still repaying the loan.
"I had to shut within a month due to the lockdown and although I reopened, the business has been slow. My daughter had returned home in February after the college closed. She had mentioned that the scholarship amount she was supposed to receive was delayed," Indian Express quoted her father as saying.
A topper
Aishwarya was a meritorious student. She second position in Telangana board's Class 12 examinations by securing 98.5 per cent last year. In the first two semesters of her graduation, she thrived in studies and scored a Grade Point Average (GPA) of 8, her friends said.
"As her GPA improved from 7.4 in the first semester to 7.8 in the second, she was keen on joining civil service coaching. She wanted to be a district collector," Huffington Post India quotes one of her friends as saying.
Shunted out of college hostel
In October this year, Aishwarya was informed by the Lady Shri Ram College for Women that she would be losing hostel accommodation as part of the college's new policy that reserves hostel accommodation only for first-year students, the same story said.
Her college, however, said that she never reached out to them for financial assistance or regarding hotel accommodation. "The college has many schemes and scholarships but she never asked for assistance. We also have many mechanisms for mental health help, but unfortunately, she had not reached out for those either," according to LSR principal Suman Sharma.
Economic plight
Countries around the world are struggling to give relief to their citizens badly hit by the double-blows of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic devastation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has announced an economic package in a bid to bring the badly hit economy back on track but some critics say that the package is not sufficient to address the financial plight. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has described the Modi government response as a "poster child of what not to do".
COVID-19 pandemic led the Indian economy to a contraction of 25 per cent in the June 2020 quarter — the sharpest contraction among major global economies.
