It wasn't meant to be this way. Nishikant Agarwal, 24, was a smart kid with a bright future. An engineering student at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai, Agarwal failed to turn up for an examination at the institute one morning last month. When his roommate returned that afternoon, he found his friend's body hanging from the ceiling. Investigators believe that performance anxiety was the probable cause of Agarwal's suicide.

The incident, like a number of others over the past year, has shocked Mumbai out of its indifference. All at once, worried parents and teachers are waking up to the pressures of modern living that youngsters have to cope with. In Delhi, the family and friends of a Class VIII student are still reeling under the shock of her suicide attempt. Just days after reports surfaced of the 13-year-old jumping from the third storey of her school building, the principal points out that she didn't fare well in a science test, the results of which were announced that day. What made this child give up on life? "Youngsters these days have to cope with incessant social changes and their own changing psychological profile," says Dr Achal Bhagat, head of the department of psychiatry at Delhi's Apollo Hospital. "The love of many parents has become conditional, there is an opportunity divide, elders are not listening enough. The youth themselves have a lower threshold of boredom and have become more sensation seeking, wanting results to be bigger and better each time."

Studies and statistics support this view. Figures show that leading the country's death-wish brigade are those below 30, quitting the rat race almost as soon as they've entered it. An ongoing study among college students in Mumbai involving Jaslok Hospital, St Xavier's College, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Harvard Medical College has made the startling revelation that a fifth of the students at Xavier's were depressed, with some showing suicidal tendencies. This research is particularly relevant as counsellors and helplines in Delhi and Mumbai gear up for what experts call a "risk period" -- January to March, the run-up to school and college examinations. During these months, and again from May to June when results are declared, helplines report a sharp rise in crisis calls.

"Exams are a major source of stress for students," says Snehlata Deshmukh, vice-chancellor of Mumbai University. Operation Hope, a Delhi helpline, received 5,000 calls from troubled students over 15 days in May and June last year. During the higher secondary exams last year, Prerana, a crisis-intervention centre in Mumbai, received as many as 150 such cries for help in a day.

It was a call to Operation Hope that saved Sapna Kumar's life. The 17-year-old from Delhi had just consumed some sleeping tablets on receiving her examination results and was planning to slash her wrists. Counsellors convinced her that there were alternatives to the career in medicine that she had planned for herself and coaxed her to vomit out the tablets. Today, Kumar is doing a course in computer applications and those moments of despair are well behind her.

Like her, Samresh Salunke is living proof of the need for more such tele-counsellors. On the third day after his disappearance from home in Mumbai, 22-year-old Salunke resurfaced in November 1997 to place a "highly suicidal" call to Prerana. Probing by the counsellor revealed that he had already made six attempts on his life, succumbing to a combination of academic pressures, an absentee father and an alcoholic mother. Counselling has now taught him to cope with his problems. Prerana's efforts probably thwarted his seventh suicide attempt.

Salunke and Kumar owe their lives to the small but determined band of organisations and individuals trying to draw attention to the problem and the remedies at hand. Alarmed by the rising incidents of suicide among the youth, Bangalore's National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (nimhans) kicked off a study in December 1998 entitled "Epidemiology of Suicide". Over the coming year, researchers will do a psychological post-mortem of victims through responses from their families, teachers, police and the media with the hope of preventing similar cases. Artist Rama Rawat's exhibition of sculptures -- "Woman and Child and Educational Pressures on Children" -- that's on in Mumbai right now, is another such effort. Saarthak, the NGO that runs Operation Hope, is holding an exhibition called "Hope Shots" in Delhi this month with photographs by young people to give them a "creative means of self-expression" and help them "redefine success for themselves", accompanied by stress-management workshops for students. In March, Saarthak will set up Hope Centres near Jamia Millia Islamia and Delhi University to provide low-cost counselling among other things.

They've set themselves a tough task. As Dr Amaresh Shrivastava, founder of Prerana, points out, "It is very difficult to convince crisis callers to even come to the centres for counselling. They are petrified of being seen or identified." If it isn't the stigma, it is the fear of the law. "The judiciary has been playing see-saw with suicide laws in this country," says Dr Mohan Issacs of nimhans. While suicide is illegal in most countries of the world, the prevention and control mechanism in India is such that the law "leaves room for harassment of the victim and family", adds Issacs. Psychologists further argue that the police should be made answerable if they fail to ensure psychiatric help for victims while proceeding with the law.

While the government cites lack of resources for its failure to widen the counselling network for students and introduce sensitisation programmes for teachers, social and academic pressures are chipping away at thousands of already frayed young minds. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, over 40 per cent of all suicides in this country are in the 15-29 age group. For most people, that's when the future is taking shape and things are beginning to work out. When they don't, it's time to step in. Counsellors and helplines are hoping that they'll get there before it's too late.

-- Nandita Chowdhury with Anna M Vetticad