Law Meets the Classroom

The Supreme Court's mental health guidelines may be India’s first systemic response to a crisis Kashmir has long endured in silence. The burden is now on schools, families, and us all.

- Naziya Rashid Kakroo

Education has always carried an extra weight in Kashmir.

Along with books, students carry burden and brouhaha. In classrooms disrupted by discord and in families grieving invisible wounds, the idea of learning as liberation feels distant.

For far too many young Kashmiris, school is a pressure cooker, than a space of growth.

We rarely say it out loud, but it’s all around us: stigma, breakdowns, and boys who suddenly leave coaching classes, the girls who stop speaking at home.

Everyone knows someone who couldn’t take it anymore. Everyone hears the same hush: don’t say it was depression, don’t tell anyone, we don’t talk about these things.

This is what makes the Supreme Court’s judgment in Sukdeb Saha v. State of Andhra Pradesh & Ors., delivered on July 26, so important.

For the first time, mental health has been affirmed as part of the constitutional right to life and dignity under Article 21. For the first time, India’s education system has been told, clearly and firmly, that the wellbeing of a student is a legal duty.

The Court issued 15 binding guidelines for all educational institutions across the country, including schools, colleges, and coaching centres.

These include mandatory trained counselors, trauma-informed care, anonymous grievance redressal, safety protocols, and the ban on humiliating or segregating students based on performance.

It’salong-overdue attempt to replace punishment with care. These measures in a place like Kashmir are urgent.

The valley’s students have grown up under an accumulation of stress. Years of political uncertainty, internet blackouts, loss, and lockdowns have created a generation that appears calm, yet inwardly fractured.