‘Campus Mothers’ at IIT-Kharagpur: Mental-Health Support Must Not Come Dressed in Stereotypes
14 July 2025 | The Indian Express
An unrelenting academic culture, the isolation of hyper-competitive environments and a system fuelled by ambition that has little room for outliers — across India’s premier institutes of higher education, the mental-health crisis has become a tragic thread in a widening pattern of student distress. Against this backdrop, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur’s proposal to launch a “Campus Mothers” initiative — appointing female mentors from among the women residing on campus, both faculty and non-faculty, to provide informal emotional support to students — presents itself as a compassionate intervention. However, its framing — the troubling tendency to offload responsibility and caregiving on women — raises concerns about gender stereotyping and carries the risk of substituting deeper, more difficult structural reforms with symbolic gestures.
To its credit, IIT-Kharagpur’s proposal is part of a growing acknowledgement within elite institutions that student wellbeing can no longer be treated as an afterthought. In 2025 alone, Kharagpur has reported three student…