To safe­guard and en­hance the well-be­ing of the farm­ing pop­u­la­tion, the au­thor ad­vo­cates re­in­forc­ing the so­cial fab­ric by fos­ter­ing a spirit of broth­er­hood, es­pe­cially in Pun­jab and build­ing vol­un­teer groups in vil­lages which can pro­vide suc­cour and sup­port to those who show sui­ci­dal ten­den­cies. There is a dire need to re­vive tra­di­tional sup­port sys­tems, in­stall mod­ern coun­selling cen­tres and en­cour­age vol­un­teerism among youth to save the dy­ing farm­ers. 

To safe­guard and en­hance the well-be­ing of the farm­ing pop­u­la­tion, the au­thor ad­vo­cates re­in­forc­ing the so­cial fab­ric by fos­ter­ing a spirit of broth­er­hood, es­pe­cially in Pun­jab and build­ing vol­un­teer groups in vil­lages which can pro­vide suc­cour and sup­port to those who show sui­ci­dal ten­den­cies. There is a dire need to re­vive tra­di­tional sup­port sys­tems, in­stall mod­ern coun­selling cen­tres and en­cour­age vol­un­teerism among youth to save the dy­ing farm­ers.

So­ci­ol­o­gists be­lieve that sui­cide is not an in­di­vid­ual act, rather it is a so­cial fact. It is not the in­di­vid­ual alone who is re­spon­si­ble for sui­cide, the so­ci­ety at large and the sup­port sys­tem stands guilty for the grue­some act.

This gives a cue to sui­cide pre­ven­tion also. While the pre­ven­tive mea­sures for the ag­grieved in­di­vid­ual are im­por­tant; at the same time sen­si­ti­za­tion of so­ci­ety at large is vi­tal as well. In Pun­jab, the so­cial sup­port sys­tem seems to be fast los­ing ground at many places, lead­ing to a spurt in sui­cide at­tempts.

Here is a re­cent ex­am­ple about two kinds of so­cial fab­ric in rural Pun­jab. Un­der the Na­tional Agri­cul­tural Sci­ence Fund (NASF), an In­dian Coun­cil of Agri­cul­tural Re­search (ICAR) pro­ject, a few days ago, we reached a vil­lage in Pun­jab’s cot­ton belt that has been nick­named as ‘sprayan wala pind’ (vil­lage of pes­ti­cides). Here ‘sprayan wala’ does not in­di­cate a vil­lage us­ing max­i­mum pes­ti­cides for agri­cul­ture. It is a vil­lage where in a short span of two months at least six youth at­tempted sui­cide by con­sum­ing pes­ti­cides.

I con­tacted the key per­son in this vil­lage. He re­luc­tantly agreed to call me to his home on the out­skirts of the vil­lage, al­most agree­ing that he will pro­vide me the de­tails and ac­com­pany me to the vic­tim’s fam­i­lies. How­ever, af­ter of­fer­ing me a cup of tea, he bla­tantly re­fused to come along with me to visit the sui­cide vic­tim fam­i­lies. In­stead he called the vil­lage watch­man and de­puted him to es­cort me cit­ing the rea­son –“our vil­lage is marred by ‘par­ty­bazi’ (frac­tional fric­tions), this watch­man is the com­mon per­son.”

With ap­pre­hen­sion loom­ing large on the faces of both per­sons, we got a bit ner­vous – “why were they so re­luc­tant to talk to a fam­ily in their own vil­lage!”. 

There were mul­ti­ple views by the vil­lage peo­ple when I en­quired about the ex­act num­ber of peo­ple who at­tempted sui­cide in re­cent past. The guesses ranged from six to ten. The level of am­bi­gu­ity sur­prised me –usu­ally so­cial net­works in small vil­lages are quite strong and peo­ple are aware about all ma­jor events in the vil­lage.  I then de­cided to con­tact a doc­tor to un­cover the truth. 

What is shock­ing is the fact that even af­ter so many at­tempts by the young­sters (all un­der 35 years, all un­mar­ried, all un­em­ployed, and as per the ver­sion of those three vil­lage per­sons, none was un­der any se­ri­ous long term debt), there was no meet­ing of vil­lage el­ders to save the youth. It turned out that there was a great di­vide among the vil­lage el­ders. The lack of com­mu­nity sol­i­dar­ity ran deep. I was told that the vil­lage runs into squab­bles, dis­cord, re­sent­ment and feuds on triv­ial is­sues. Meet­ings with fam­i­lies of sui­cide vic­tims re­vealed that this was a vil­lage where the so­cial fab­ric was torn and tat­tered; fac­tion­al­ism on po­lit­i­cal and caste lines marred the so­ci­ety.  

“ “Talk to me. You are not alone. You have op­tions. Help is there.” Even this is of im­mense help.”

This was the story of a vil­lage which has yet not risen above ‘groupism’ de­spite so many sui­cide at­tempts. There seemed ab­solutely no ev­i­dence of the com­mu­nity com­ing to­gether for their own bet­ter­ment. Our team had to be very cau­tious dur­ing our in­ter­ac­tions with fam­i­lies of sui­cide at­tempt­ing youth, lest we un­wit­tingly al­lied our­selves with a mem­ber on one side of the di­vide.

But all is not lost yet. Here is an­other story of a Pun­jab vil­lage in the Ja­graon tehsil of Lud­hi­ana dis­trict.

A farmer of this vil­lage suf­fered a ma­jor set­back as his wheat crop was de­stroyed due to fire. He was al­ready un­der debt. He had taken some land on lease, how­ever that was ru­ined too. Com­pletely shat­tered, the farmer was mis­er­able and help­less. But the vil­lage el­ders and youth were very sup­port­ive. They im­me­di­ately ap­proached him, of­fered so­lace and hinted that the vil­lage will do some­thing to help him. Some young­sters took ini­tia­tive and started col­lect­ing do­na­tions from every house­hold in or­der to mit­i­gate the dam­ages suf­fered by that farmer. Some NRI’s who were vis­it­ing the vil­lage at that time con­tributed gen­er­ously. Peo­ple from nearby vil­lages also of­fered mon­e­tary sup­port. It was learnt that peo­ple man­aged to col­lect an in­cred­i­bly hand­some amount which en­abled the farmer to pay all his cur­rent and pre­vi­ous debts. This is a clas­sic ex­am­ple of ‘Bhaichara’ (broth­er­hood, strong so­cial fab­ric). If so­ci­ety joins hands to­gether to help, no one re­sorts to sui­cides.

My visit to these two vil­lages has peaked my in­ter­est in bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of what so­cial sys­tems are needed to cre­ate and sus­tain a strong so­cial fab­ric. The dif­fer­ence that so­cial fab­ric can make in pre­vent­ing sui­cides and cre­at­ing op­por­tu­nity for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions is gi­gan­tic.

Cur­rently, the spirit of ‘Bhaichara’ is badly dev­as­tated in many vil­lages of the state. The ‘peo­ple-to-peo­ple’ con­nec­tion in Pun­jab is get­ting weaker. The so­cial fab­ric — the na­ture and web of in­ter­ac­tions and re­la­tion­ships be­tween peo­ple within groups and be­tween groups is de­te­ri­o­rat­ing at a fast pace. The na­ture of in­ter­weav­ing, so­cial in­ter­ac­tions and hu­man in­ter­face needs to be re­ex­am­ined.

For pre­vent­ing sui­cides, pro­vid­ing mon­e­tary help is very im­por­tant but re­build­ing the so­cial fab­ric too is quite vi­tal.  It is dif­fi­cult to find pro­fes­sional men­tal health help or coun­sel­ing ser­vices in In­dia as there is an acute short­age of men­tal-health pro­fes­sion­als. In­dia spends just 0.06 per­cent of its health bud­get on men­tal health, which is even less than that of Bangladesh (0.44 per­cent). Ac­cord­ing to WHO fig­ures, the de­vel­oped world spends 4 per­cent of their bud­gets on men­tal health ser­vices that in­clude re­search, in­fra­struc­ture etc. There is an ur­gent need to al­lo­cate re­sources to this sec­tor.

Cul­tur­ally Pun­jab used to have a very good tra­di­tion of giv­ing ‘sikhya’ and ‘sehra’ at the time of Anand Karaj (wed­ding). El­ders used to give ser­mons to both bride and groom at the time of wed­ding. Do’s and don’ts of mar­ried lives were dis­cussed in pub­lic, of­ten with per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ences of se­niors and the mes­sage was con­veyed hu­mor­ously. To­day this tra­di­tion has been for­got­ten.  Clearly, we can see that there is need for men­tor­ing newly-weds. 

“ Young­sters! Come for­ward, vol­un­teer your­self. The Pun­jab Agri­cul­tural Uni­ver­sity, Lud­hi­ana is run­ning free train­ing courses for se­lected Peer Sup­port Vol­un­teers. Get trained and save your vil­lages, farm­ers from com­mit­ting sui­cides.

Re­mem­ber, sui­ci­dal be­hav­ior largely com­prises of four steps – sui­cide ideation, overt in­ten­tion, sui­cide at­tempt and sui­cide com­ple­tion. While psy­chi­a­trists be­lieve that sui­cide ideation is com­mon. Many peo­ple in their life­times have had these brain waves at least once in hours of cri­sis or de­jec­tion. How­ever, at the sec­ond step when one con­fides with some­one his/​her idea of sui­cide or starts an­nounc­ing it more openly -that is the alert call. In sec­ond stage, one starts plan­ning for sui­cide, search­ing for eas­i­est and per­fect method; best time to com­mit sui­cide.

At the third stage, an at­tempt is made. This is ba­si­cally an alarm to at­tract at­ten­tion, a cry, a call for help and a sign of hope­less­ness. As per nu­mer­ous re­searches, many sui­cides vic­tims who are saved from their sui­cide at­tempt can­didly con­fess that they do not wish to die. It was just be­cause they were not hav­ing any es­cape from their con­di­tion that they tried to at­tempt.

Sui­cide is the pain of be­ing tor­tured by one’s own mind. The com­mon stres­sor in sui­cide is an un­met psy­cho­log­i­cal need and the com­mon stim­u­lus is in­tol­er­a­ble psy­cho­log­i­cal pain.  This pain that leads to sui­cide of­ten goes un­no­ticed. At the out­set, cri­sis sup­port is prime duty of the so­ci­ety at the out­set. Sui­cide pre­ven­tion is every­body’s re­spon­si­bil­ity. Sui­cide is hun­dred per­cent pre­ventable. There is just a dire need to train peo­ple to speak up. To reach out and stay strong. A proven pri­mary sui­cide pre­ven­tion strat­egy is to pro­mote the help avail­able in the vicin­ity. Even pro­vid­ing of tele­phone num­bers can help. Treat­ment is avail­able. Early de­tec­tion and the treat­ment are the keys.

So­cial fab­ric seems to be the sin­gle most valu­able met­ric by which one can gauge a com­mu­ni­ty’s part­ner­ship po­ten­tial. If in the hours of cri­sis, some­one as­sures you – “Talk to me. You are not alone. You have op­tions. Help is there.” Even this is of im­mense help.  The so­ci­ety needs to in­fuse a spirit in a per­son that you are braver than you be­lieve, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think. Tell the dis­tressed per­son that de­spite the things you have been through, it is ok not to be ok. Have hope.

 Read also : Pun­jab Farmer sui­cides – Are we miss­ing the ele­phant in the room?

There is an im­per­a­tive and ur­gent need to iden­tify ded­i­cated, spir­ited teach­ers and so­cial work­ers in every vil­lage and train them for psy­cho­log­i­cal first aid. The ba­sic first aid which each one of us can ex­er­cise is to be­come a pa­tient lis­tener. Let the ag­grieved per­son ven­ti­late. A promise of con­fi­den­tial­ity, so that the ag­grieved per­son can share his prob­lems with­out fear, can go a long way in heal­ing the wounds of a dis­tressed per­son.

Un­der the NASF pro­ject, we are try­ing to mo­ti­vate and train vil­lage youth as ‘Peer Sup­port Vol­un­teers’ to take ini­tia­tive in stop­ping fur­ther sui­cides.  At the same time, there is need for rais­ing aware­ness about men­tal health in schools and col­leges. The need for bet­ter par­ent­ing skills dur­ing emo­tional crises of youth is very im­por­tant. Par­ents should fre­quently seek help of pro­fes­sional coun­selors in hours of cri­sis of their wards. No stigma should be at­tached to such talks. Fam­ily back­ground has an im­por­tant role in de­ter­min­ing how young peo­ple cope with de­spair.

Sui­cides also re­sult from poor re­la­tion­ships with par­ents, un­met ex­pec­ta­tions, the feel­ing of be­ing un­wanted, poor re­la­tion­ships with peers, de­jec­tion due to failed love af­fairs etc. Our schools, col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties do not have any coun­sel­ing ex­perts in­clud­ing psy­chol­o­gist who as­sist stu­dents at the on­set of emo­tional and men­tal prob­lems. Hence some stu­dents spi­ral into full-fledged clin­i­cal de­pres­sion lead­ing to sui­cide. Men­tal health, life skills lessons and well­ness should be added to school cur­ricu­lum. Only when chil­dren know about these dis­or­ders in their for­ma­tive years will they be able to seek help.

 Read also : Sui­cide Pre­ven­tion – a Chal­lenge in In­dia and the world

The will­ing­ness and abil­ity to work to­gether, cre­at­ing a har­mo­nized so­ci­ety will lead to a pos­i­tive and pro­gress­ing state. There is an im­per­a­tive and ur­gent need to roll out a roadmap and an ad­vo­cacy agenda to­wards im­prov­ing so­cial fab­ric of Pun­jab in an ef­fort to con­tribute to safe­guard­ing and en­hanc­ing the well­be­ing of farm­ing pop­u­lace in par­tic­u­lar. In­crease re­spon­sive­ness through ad­vo­cacy on the im­por­tance of so­cial fab­ric en­hance­ment; re­in­force the so­cial fab­ric within com­mu­ni­ties and amongst di­verse groups; raise the lev­els of tol­er­ance, pa­tience, un­der­stand­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tion within the so­ci­ety and en­cour­age har­mony and sol­i­dar­ity.

Stigma is the ma­jor bar­rier to sui­cide pre­ven­tion ef­forts. While deal­ing with a per­son of sui­ci­dal ten­den­cies al­ways ac­tively lis­ten and pos­i­tively re­in­force self-care, be non-judg­men­tal, re­move lethal or harm­ful ob­jects from the sur­round­ings, call a pro­fes­sional. It is high time to reach out and save lives. Con­nect, com­mu­ni­cate and care should be the buzz words.

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Young­sters! Come for­ward, vol­un­teer your­self. The Pun­jab Agri­cul­tural Uni­ver­sity, Lud­hi­ana is run­ning free train­ing courses for se­lected Peer Sup­port Vol­un­teers. Get trained and save your vil­lages, farm­ers from com­mit­ting sui­cides. 

Take a minute, Change a life. It is now or never!