- Bhu Dayal, 40, unable to make both ends meet and maintain his family, after he lost his home guard’s job in Delhi, jumped off his second-storey terrace and ended his life.
- Far away in Calcutta, Apurba Das, 34, and his wife Aparna, 30, took a similar decision one fine day this January. The detergent salesman was struggling to run his family, including two baby girls, on his paltry Rs 1,000 salary. Aparna died, Apurba barely survived after consuming pesticide.
- In Panchalam, an idyllic village of some 2,000 people in Kozhikode, Kerala, at least 32 young men and women have killed themselves in recent months. Most of them couldn’t pay off their debts in time.
Indians have suddenly been seized by a compulsive death-wish. As suicide rates spiral across the country, taking a little over 100,000 lives in 1998—1,04,713 to be precise, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (ncrb)—there is one disturbing footnote: more and more Indians in their prime—15 to 29 years and 30 to 44 years—are taking their lives. Unlike the West, where the suicide rate is usually higher for the elderly, seven out of 10 Indians who commit suicide today are young or middle-aged. The reasons are varied but related—poverty, stress or inability to adjust to a society in transition.
The yawning disparity between soaring ambitions and modest achievements is leading a host of young and the middle-aged to the edge. "From teens to middle age, one has role models one is supposed to emulate. But when one can’t cope with the realities at work or at home, one seems to opt for the easy way out at the slightest provocation," says G.K. Karanth, head of the sociology unit at the Bangalore-based Institute for Social and Economic Change.
Increasing casualties among the productive sections of the population affirms the thesis of socio-economic stress. Prosperous Bangalore is a classic instance. A nimhans team headed by G. Gururaj, head of the department of epidemiology, carried out psychiatric evaluation of 2,651 cases of suicide and 1,550 of those who attempted to end their lives between 1996 and 1999 in 12 hospitals in the city. The study found that a staggering 79 per cent of them were in the prime of their lives—52 per cent in the 15-29 years group and 27 per cent 30-44 years old. It also revealed that more women and children were ending their lives—especially among the migrant population (from rural to urban areas), their work-related stress and interpersonal troubles accentuated by a paucity of social support networks. Says Gururaj: "We traced the events and factors that prompted them to take the extreme step. We found it was a cumulative effect of various problems—unemployment, economic privation, disharmony in the family, and in some cases, alcoholism too." Mumbai-based sociologist Gita Shah attributes the rising rates of suicide among the young and the middle-aged to Bangalore’s speedy transition from a sleepy pensioner’s paradise to a bustling infotech hub.
Shekhar Seshadri, additional professor of psychiatry, child and adolescent services at nimhans, feels aspiration levels of the young, inspired by success stories in the southern Indian infotech boomtowns like Bangalore, are peaking. "People are in a rush here and percentage (in exams) is more important than learning. Most parenting is about output and nobody seems to talk to their kids about their interest in culture or in games." Consequently, there is no ‘knowledge construction’ on how to handle youth with fragile minds and low tolerance levels.
No wonder the number of pressured young people taking their lives has surged steeply. In Hyderabad, for example, as many as 166 suicide deaths in the 16-24 age group were reported last year. Most of the cases were attributed to two factors—either failing to qualify for professional courses or not scoring good marks. In Calcutta, Serve, a helpline for stressed children, is choked with calls from on-the-edge kids before exams. In Bangalore, at least a dozen students ended their lives after the results of class X and pre-university exams were announced. All these people were stalked by fear of ridicule by parents and peers.
At the helpline for children and adolescents in the police commissioner’s office in Hyderabad, a call is received every day from tense children—some as young as 12 years—mulling on whether to end their lives. Says helpline coordinator Brinda N. Adige: "They feel nobody wants them. In some cases, the kids have complained that parents argued with each other, saying the child ought not to have come into the world. And all of them are intelligent and tell us what they read in newspapers or the Net about depressed minds and legendary personalities who have committed suicide. It’s a tough task to divert their attention from themselves and their problems to other hobbies."
Sociologist Shah, who is also a consultant on crisis intervention and disaster management, says: "The trend of paying youngsters whopping salaries from the beginning of their careers also contributes to stress. You pay them Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000 a month and then they have to constantly prove themselves. So, there’s job burnout."
Then there is a variant of herd mentality: pushy parents pressurising children to take on the most happening and lucrative job in town. In Hyderabad, most parents want their kids to graduate as engineers and migrate to the Silicon Valley—about 30,000 software engineers from the state are working in Silicon Valley. In Bangalore, too, parents would like their children to top their class, graduate as engineers and join one of the many multinational software companies or the Indian monoliths—Infosys Technologies or Wipro Ltd. It has come to such a pass that parents would not like their children to pursue other careers or pursuits such as the arts or sports. The abnormally high aspiration levels of children are best summed up by Vidhya Manohara Sharma, principal of a junior college in Hyderabad: "Every parent wants his kid to land in the US. It is sad that the relationship between the parent and children is becoming more ‘merchant-customer’ rather than what it used to be in the past."
Others blame liberalisation for unsettling the youngster’s mind. D.M. Nanjundappa, an economist and former vice-chairman of the Karnataka planning board, says: "The ‘free for all’ has youngsters jumping at the first opportunity of making easy money that comes their way. They’re unable to sustain it for long and end their lives because they cannot bear barbs from others." Adds he: "Liberalisation has only increased the standard of living, not the quality of life."
Among the middle-aged, urban unemployment, poverty and interpersonal problems form a depressing bouquet of factors. The inability to strike a working relationship with a spouse or a colleague, one that psychiatrists describe as "adjustment disorder", accounts for a sizeable number of cases cutting across places and classes. Explains Lakshmi Vijaykumar, vice-president of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (iasp): "The maximum stress factor is interpersonal conflict—husband-wife, father-son or between lovers." These road bumps in relationships, according to Amresh Shrivastava, secretary general, Indian Association of Suicidology, Mumbai, could be the most lethal contribution.
RISING alcoholism is also cited as a reason behind the burgeoning suicide rate among the young and the middle-aged. Says H. Chandrashekar, head of the department of psychiatry in Bangalore's Victoria Hospital: "At least 70 per cent of attempted suicides we’ve studied in the rural pockets of Bangalore district were alcohol-related. Men who were depressed and brooding after a couple of drinks and women who couldn’t tolerate physical and mental abuse by alcoholic husbands." The problem of alcohol being a key factor has been corroborated by Vijaykumar’s study in Chennai’s corporation zone. Of the 100 cases that she investigated, 34 had killed themselves because they were either alcoholics or inebriated.
The detrimental impact of losing people in the prime of their lives is manifold: an abrupt termination of ideas and processes, a spurt in the number of single parents and childless widows, to list a few. According to Shalini Bharat, professor in the unit for family studies at the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences, the number of such people might not be significant to make an impact on the economy, but in the socio-psychological sphere, the consequences could be serious. She cautions: "If the figures continue to climb, they could have a modelling effect for other youth and they too would choose this escape mechanism."
After all this, psychiatrists insist India’s mental health is in a worse state than what even the ncrb figures would have us believe. They say suicide cases are under-reported and underestimated. To back their postulate, they list several reasons such as the quality and system of reporting and the social taboo (associated with the victims and their families). In rural outreaches, families routinely spin tales of accidental deaths and hinder investigations. Sometimes, families utilise the dual ploy of bribing the police as well as pleading that they be left alone in their moment of grief. Says Shrivastava: "I don’t know how the report can quote a figure of 10.8 suicides per 100,000 people when the who speaks of 11.4 (men) and 8.0 (women) for India in 1995 itself." The who has put out these figures on its official website. But one thing is clear: the fabled Indian emotional ‘security net’ is obviously not enough these days to stop more and more of the young and the able to end their lives abruptly.
