When 20-year-old Kanishk Ranaut (name changed) moved from Dehradun to Mumbai to pursue his education, he found more than just confusing traffic and crumbling space. Adjusting to matchbox housing in Mumbai was not easy, and not seeing familiar faces around made it harder. Student life, especially for those who move to big, bad Mumbai, is not easy. Naturally, twenty-somethings require emotional support to tough it out.

This is also the reason why IIT Kharagpur announced a Campus Mothers initiative. This is part of the institute’s five-pronged mental health framework, SETU (Support, Empathy, Transformation, and Upliftment). Under this framework, the Campus Mothers plan is an initiative to add a “motherly touch” to student welfare. The plan encourages female campus residents, staff, faculty wives, and female residents to volunteer their time to offer emotional support to students.

As it’s voluntary, it’s unpaid. But this also means it adds to the institute’s mental welfare programmes without increasing costs. While the idea aims to fill a gap in support and supplement the counselling services on campus, it has been met with criticism on the Internet, with many questioning why the university is outsourcing emotional labour to women alone.