Skip to main content

Progress toward suicide


In a rather sentimentally titled article, The Saddest Trend, The Economist says that more and more people are committing suicide in the country of “inexorable progress.”  From 1999 to 2014, the suicide rates in America rose by 24%. 

The article does not list any reasons.  America is a dream for many people in the world.  So many Asians are willing to sacrifice their lifetime savings in order to be able to migrate and live in America, the perceived paradise on earth.  America, the land of progress, the land of dreams, the zenith of human aspirations.  Yet the Americans are choosing to end their lives prematurely!  “Men shoot themselves, women take poison,” tells the article pithily. 

Let the reasons be, whatever they are.  We shall wait for experts to analyse them. In the meanwhile, we may ask ourselves why is India, our country, leaving no stone unturned in following in the footsteps of this nation whose people are choosing death over life. 

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza: End of the Road
Source: DeviantArt
We have adopted the American economic policies and the attendant development dreams lock, stock, and barrel.  Statistical data about economic growth and per capita income give us orgasmic ecstasies.  We have replaced our natural forests with concrete jungles.  We have killed our rivers with industrial effluents.  We have converted our villages, what the father of the nation called the soul of the country, into deserts. 

But we are marching like Don Quixote and his most loyal Sancho Panza towards “inexorable progress.”

For what?


Indian Bloggers

Comments

  1. The citied article talked about suicide rates in America and other rich countries. According to some other article I read somewhere, people living in middle and lower financial standards are fast leaving big and renowned cities of America and moving towards more economical areas.
    I think the time is not far when this trend would be followed in all countries including our own India.
    It's not only the migrating issue, even for people who choose to stay here itself, we the society have put so much pressure on particular standards of living that many times, people fail to live up to that and end their lives.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As the rich become richer and live more royal lives, the poor will be forced to move out. This is the reverse of what happened during industrialisation: people are now forced to leave the cities. But the countryside or village may not be able to sustain them especially in a country like India.

      We may look at Bhutan for some lessons. They try to assess the happiness quotient rather than economic statistics. That's a paradigm shift,in fact.

      Delete
  2. Blame depression, our self-made bubbles where we prefer spending more time with technology than real people, breakup of the great Indian family....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bubbles are the most important things. The world runs on bubbles.

      Delete
  3. This post caught my attention because many times I feel that we are blindly aping the west without giving any thoughts. And why are we doing so? partly our colonial mindset...anything emanating from west must be good and partly because of media. Our thoughts are infleunced by what we see and read in any form of media as well as by actions of our circle. For example, currently glass facade buildings are pretty popular. The trend that came in from west. Unfortunately, it might suit their climate and weather but it's not at all conducive for our conditions. But who's going to question this psychology? Similarly we are giving up our culture and mindset to adopt "imported" one! People say that's future....I disagree.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Many of our engineers and architects are foreign-educated. Anyway whatever comes from the west is perceived as great. At the same time we have a silly notion of nationalism too. Quite funny we are!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

War and Meaning of Victory

In the summer of 1999, while the rest of India was soaked in monsoon and Cricket World Cup, the country’s soldiers were clawing up frozen cliffs daring the bullets that came shooting from above. India’s incorrigible neighbour had sent its soldiers and militants to capture the snow-covered peaks of Kargil. It was an act of deception, a capture of India’s land stealthily. The terrain was harsh and hostile, testing the limits of human courage with every jagged step. The Kargil War was not just against a human enemy, but against peaks of stones and snow where the air itself was an adversary. Three months of bitter conflict and subhuman killing ended in India’s victory over the invading Pakistan. Victory! July 26 is celebrated ever after as Kargil Vijay Diwas by India. What is victory, however? Philosophically, I mean. We are supposed to be rational (philosophical) creatures, after all. “ W ar does not determine who is right,” Bertrand Russell said famously, “but who is left.” Every...

Stories from the North-East

Book Review Title: Lapbah: Stories from the North-East (2 volumes) Editors: Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih & Rimi Nath Publisher: Penguin Random House India 2025 Pages: 366 + 358   Nestled among the eastern Himalayas and some breathtakingly charming valleys, the Northeastern region of India is home to hundreds of indigenous communities, each with distinct traditions, attire, music, and festivals. Languages spoken range from Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic tongues to Indo-Aryan dialects, reflecting centuries of migration and interaction. Tribal matrilineal societies thrive in Meghalaya, while Nagaland and Mizoram showcase rich Christian tribal traditions. Manipur is famed for classical dance and martial arts, and Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh add further layers of ethnic plurality and ecological richness. Sikkim blends Buddhist heritage with mountainous serenity, and Assam is known for its tea gardens and vibrant Vaishnavite culture. Collectively, the Northeast is a uni...

The RSS and Paradoxes

The oldest racist organisation in the world is all set to celebrate the centenary of its existence. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was founded in 1925 with the specific goal of unifying the Hindus in India under a religious and cultural banner. The Indian Independence struggle that was going on in full force at that time was no concern of the RSS. Though it gave the liberty to its individual members to take part in the struggle, the organisation’s official policy was to stay clear of it altogether. That was only one of the many paradoxical ironies that marked the RSS which was a nationalist organisation that cared little for the Independence of the nation. Today, the Prime Minister of India is a man who was trained and nurtured by the RSS. Shashi Tharoor wrote a massive book on the paradoxes that underscore the personality of Mr Narendra Modi. The RSS and paradoxes go hand in hand, if we take Modi as a specimen of the organisation’s great achievements. Tharoor’s final asses...