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| Unending unnatural deaths | | Time for Govt, civil society to intervene | |
The suicidal death of a Jammu University has come as yet another entry in the unnatural death register of Jammu and Kashmir. Recently there has been a huge public debate on the number of persons killed in the road accidents every year. After the statistics released by the Traffic Department revealed that number of human loss in road mishaps is almost three times higher than that in militancy related incidents, it called for a focused approach to address this serious issue. While roads take over militancy in killing people, the third gloomiest reason for unnatural deaths in Jammu and Kashmir is emerging as suicides. After a steep drop in violence, the hidden trauma of life in a conflict zone is leading to an alarming increase in suicides across Jammu and Kashmir and the Valley is topping the list. Though no exact statistics are available on the number of persons dying every year due to suicides, but any single day’s police register or the newspaper reports would suggest that not less than two persons are dying every day due to suicides or mysterious deaths. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, West Bengal was the state with the highest number of suicides in 2005 and Jammu and Kashmir stood at 31st place in list of 34 States and Union Territories. Being at 31st place is not a cause for complacency as Jammu and Kashmir is a small population state and numbers of death in suicides are disturbing when compared to other causes. The commonly attributed causes — depressions due to family feuds, thwarted romance, the pressure to excel academically — are more confusing than convincing. Dysfunctional family, unrequited love and blind ambition were facts of life even decades ago. Yet the young back then did not give up with such alacrity. The burden of education, and its related frustration, has undoubtedly increased over the years. Families have disintegrated bit by bit, friendship has moved on from the real to the virtual plane. But there appears to be something beyond loneliness, despair or shame that keeps eluding even psychiatrists, who can expertly rationalize why someone chose to stop living. Poverty, unemployed parents, being forced to drop out of school, early marriage, child labour, domestic abuse, and myriad other truths deadlier than jilted love or broken families lead boys and girls in the suburbs to self-destruction. Suicide cases were notices the most in the summer of 2008 during Amarnath land row agitation. It is not that more people were ending their live in frustration or anger during the land row agitation but they were just being noticed more. A detailed study, ‘Muslim Suicide—Experience From Kashmir Valley’, conducted by 12 psychiatrists of the Government Psychiatry Hospital, Srinagar, says that “suicide rate is on the rise” while “increase in para suicides and ‘deliberate self harm’ are much more alarming”.The research team of doctors studied 14, 830 case files to say that “Kashmir, being a predominantly Muslim society, had expectedly the lowest rates of suicide in the whole of India” but the situation has changed. It has changed for the worst. Suicidal behavior has become one of the commonest emergencies in medical casualties in the state. On the new year eve, it should become a resolution for civil society and the government to end this culture of giving up life abruptly.
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