29-Jul-2013
NEHA BHATT
What makes industrious Jabalpur the city with India's highest suicide rate?
Jeet Sharma, 27 - Under treatment for depression, he now practises meditation
JABALPUR : On most days, Jabalpur's well-known Tilwara bridge, on the route to
Nagpur, makes a fetching picture. The Narmada gushes far below, dark hills
rise at one end of the bridge, the other end a sea of green that seals from
view the grimy city of Jabalpur beyond. But in 'suicide season', as locals
casually call the months between April and July, when exam results are
generally declared, this bridge turns deadly, becoming the city's preferred
'khudkhushi point', tempting scores of young men and women to go over the rails
and into the swirling waters below.
This doesn't raise many eyebrows in Jabalpur anymore, for the phenomenon has
been all too routinised. In fact, the National Crime Records Bureau's suicide
statistics reveal a chilling fact: Jabalpur tops the list of Indian cities,
with nearly 50 suicides a month and a suicide rate of 45.1 for every 1,000
people in the city, beating 52 other big cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Pune,
Delhi and Mumbai. Jabalpur clocked 572 suicides in 2012, up from 351 the year
before. Local papers reduce news of daily suicides to single column stories,
though recently the local channel, Sahara Samay MP, aired an hour-long special
feature on the depressing trend, titled 'Jabalpur: Suicide Capital'. "The
local media haven't fully caught on to the gravity of the situation. There are
hardly any discussions on the problem, not even among NGOs," says Harpreet
Kaur, who produced the show.
But what makes Jabalpur such a grim city to live in? Amit Mishra, 17, a
student in a private school who tried to commit suicide early this month, has
a ready answer: "This is not a city that can support my dreams and my parents
don't understand that. I failed my Class XII this year and father wants me to
pursue engineering when all I want is to go to Mumbai and try my luck as an
actor," says the young man, lying in the ICU at the city's National Hospital,
where several beds are reserved under the 'poison unit', meant for treating an
overwhelming number of residents who consume poison to try to end it all.
Amit Mishra, 17, Jabalpur wouldn't support his dreams, so he took naphthalene
balls. ( Photograph by Jitender Gupta) Amit swallowed naphthalene balls on the
night of July 1 and and was brought to the hospital by his parents the next
day. In an eerie reality TV-like dramatisation of his deathwish, he tells us
about a suicide note he has composed, noting that his case should be featured
on Crime Patrol, a TV show. He pulls out his wallet and points to two photos,
one showing a dusky, shy-looking boy, the other the grown-up, better-groomed
version. "Can you believe this? So dark-skinned and mousy. Look at how I have
worked on myself. I have high aspirations, I want expensive phones, a job in
the movies, I just need my parents to let me go."
His father steps in to inquire after his health, but the young boy won't talk
to him. Outside, the father, Satyendra Mishra, is in tears: "I'm just a
worried father. What did I do wrong? I have a job in a clothing company, but
I've tried to give him all he ever wanted. In return, I ask him to focus, not
be wayward. But I guess we failed to understand him."
Across from Amit's bed twentysomething Meena Kumar lies unconscious. She is in
a critical condition. Her husband Naren, a pharmacist, claims she swallowed
four unknown antibiotics "by mistake". A few beds down, Dhiren Singh, 28, who
consumed Celphos pesticide the day before, writhes in pain and is delirious.
He is watched over by his brother, whom doctors have told that Dhiren won't
survive the day. Asked why he took the drastic step, his brother Viru shrugs,
saying he may have been unhappy as he didn't have a regular job, but couldn't
be sure as they weren't close enough.
Meena Kumar, 20+, Reason unknown, but she tried to kill herself by swallowing
"medicines". ( Photograph by Jitender Gupta) Jabalpur, the army nerve-centre
of Madhya Pradesh, could well resemble any other Indian small town in the
midst of a badly managed transition. As a chaotic traffic system gives way to
a regularised bus service, single screen halls make way for multiplexes, local
markets compete with the new 'Big Bazaar' mall in town, old and new mindsets
battle it out. But below the surface, the city hasn't kept up with the pace of
its people, those with big city aspirations. "People are taking extreme
measures here at the drop of a hat, and one of the reasons could be the
breakdown of the joint family. Petty domestic quarrels become bigger because
you have no one to sort things out. Plus, the working population here is
solely dependent on government jobs, such as those at the Gun Carriage
Factory, Vehicle Factory or Indian Ordnance Factory, with few industries and
hardly any avenues in the private sector," says Harinarayanachari Mishra, SP
for the district. "Who knows, but reading about suicides everyday in the
newspapers could be setting off a chain reaction, becoming the obvious
response to any problem, big or small."
A large chunk of the suicide victims are students and young housewives,
according to police figures. Dr Hema Sahu, one of the few clinical
psychologists in the city, says, "Most of my patients are aged 16-30, as this
is the stage when you want the whole world with as little effort as possible.
I regularly have newly-married women whose expectations from marriage are
different from what it is in reality, students who feel isolated in this city,
kids who cannot communicate with their parents. I'm not surprised I have three
times the number of patients coming to me than two years ago, because the
opportunities here are sorely missing and dissatisfaction levels are so high."
***
Worry Not, This Fan Is Suicide-Proof Dr R.S. Sharma's invention can save
on-the-brink lives
The doctor's assistant demonstrates. The noose is around his neck. He hops off
the supporting stool, but with any load more than 25 kilos... ..the
spring-loaded suspension gives way. At worst, he'll be hurt by the fall.
***
Dr R.S. Sharma, a cardiologist who is well-regarded in town, says, "If
Jabalpur's residents are not inspired to realign their mindsets, at least let's
make it tougher for them to take their own lives." Sharma has invented a
"suicide-proof fan", struck by the spate of death-by-hanging cases, especially
by hostellers. Sharma's assistant uses a stool and a sample fan to demonstrate.
It's a simple device, really, where the springs give if anything heavier than
25 kilos is hung from the fan. "It costs just Rs 450-600 more than a regular
fan and the idea was that, just as there is a safety device in every machine,
why not have one in a fan, which is one of the most common methods of suicide
here," says Sharma, who has filed for a patent and received an order for 1,000
pieces from the Union ministry of science and technology.
Gynaecologist Pushpa Pande, who also counsels in her free time, prefers
attacking the root cause, which she elaborates as rising self-esteem issues in
an "inferior city". Jabalpur is a city in deep conflict, she says, much more
than other metros. "Youngsters want to explore a more experimental life, but
the older generation hasn't welcomed change. TV is probably the only source of
entertainment here, encouraging artificial expectations, which leads to
widespread depression when those expectations are not met," explains Pande, who
hosts a batch of medical students every morning in the meditation hall at her
home to deal with stress.
One of her patients, 27-year-old Jeet Sharma, under medication for chronic
depression, continues to struggle with "small-town boy" image issues. "I used
to see my Facebook friends put up posts about travelling all over the world
and I used to ask myself, why not me?" Jeet asks. While Jabalpur may be a
tier-2 city on paper, it feels far from one.
Despite a few well-intentioned interventions, Jabalpur grapples with bigger
issues at the moment. In the narrow, busy lanes of the city's Saraafa Bazaar,
where Hitendra Srivastava lives in a modest two-storey house, the lack of good
medical care continues to haunt the 35-year-old government school teacher. He
lost his younger brother, Tijendra, in March this year. He had hung himself
from the ceiling fan in his bedroom. Hitendra seats himself on a plastic chair
from where he can look out the main door on to the street. "This is where my
brother liked to sit the entire day, not saying much. He was diagnosed with
schizophrenia in 2006, and I used to take him to the Institute of Mental Health
in Agra every month for checkups. If we had better access to medical
facilities right here in Jabalpur, he could have been saved."
The city, about 300 km from the state capital Bhopal, has touristic potential
in Bedaghat, the site famous for marble rocks that rise dramatically on either
side of the Narmada, the picturesque Dhuandhar falls, and a few important
temples. The city also serves as the nerve-centre of many bus and railway
lines, with a tiny airport offering daily flights to Delhi and Mumbai. But the
joke here goes that only outbound trains and flights go full as everyone only
wants to flee.
Yet, not everyone is convinced that there is anything particularly amiss in
Jabalpur. Rakesh Singh, BJP mp from the city, says he was surprised to learn
about its suicide figures. "There has been a lot of development here in the
last 7-8 years, in terms of connectivity, growth, education. Perhaps societal
changes are the reason." Indeed, despite its somewhat lethargic functioning,
Jabalpur is something of an education hub in Madhya Pradesh, third in line
after Bhopal and Indore, with a number of engineering and medical
institutions. With a high student population from smaller districts of Madhya
Pradesh and neighbouring states, there is clearly a rising sense of youth
disillusionment. Geeta Gupta, a 26-year-old medical student from Rajasthan,
has lived in Jabalpur for the last eight years and studies at N.S.C.B. Medical
College, located on the outskirts. But increasing pressure at college and no
emotional outlet-either in the form of counselling or an ambience of
downtime-has led to deep depression. Geeta fights suicidal thoughts,
confiding in nobody. "When I was interning last year, I'd come across 4-5
cases of attempted suicide daily. That shook me up, helped me get a
perspective, and seek help. I didn't want to end up like that," she says.
Dr O.P. Raichandani, a psychiatrist, admits Jabalpur is terribly low on
medical resources to deal with the rising number of patients. "Awareness of
psychiatry and psychotherapy is low, helplines are few, there are no full-time
psychiatric wards. All this could build up to such a high suicide rate, but
it's also possible the rate of suicide reporting is higher than other cities,"
he says.
What little counselling facilities the town has are rather arbitrary, with
hardly any follow-ups; psychologists often don't even keep records of patients
who consult them. "Jabalpur has what you could call an inferiority complex.
Compared to Indore and Bhopal, cities that are better planned, Jabalpur is a
society in turmoil," says Gyan Prakash, a social science professor at Devi
Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya, Indore. What is also missing, adds Mishra, the SP, is a
sense of public outrage. "As a society, we are not reacting strongly enough.
At the police end, we are planning a seminar on suicides with the help of the
Jabalpur Foundation," he says. "Through the initiative, we will encourage
students to communicate, and schools and colleges to keep counsellors close at
hand."
Meanwhile, Jabalpur could do well to remember these immortal lines by Dorothy
Parker:
Razors pain you,
Rivers are damp,
Acids stain you,
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful,
Nooses give,
Gas smells awful,
You might as well live.
(Names of patients have been changed)
***
Cities With The Highest Suicide Rates Jabalpur 45.1 Kollam 40.5 Rajkot 30.5
(Annual figures of suicides per 1,000 people living in the city or town.)
***
Top Causes Of Suicide* Domestic quarrels Mental/physical illness Censure
Affairs gone wrong Failure in exams Substance abuse ***
Top Modes Of Suicide Hanging Poisoning Self-immolation Drowning Lying on
railway tracks
Source: Latest National Crime Records Bureau, Jabalpur police stats
http://www.outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?286998
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