It’s not just stress, else hundreds would have killed themselves

The three suicides that took place on the same day in Mumbai, on the face of it, are shocking occurrences. All three victims were adolescents or nearing their teens, coming from so called normal family backgrounds and reportedly victims of stress arising out of a competition and consumer driven society.

Are these incidents a strange coincidence or are they an indication of a deeper malaise that afflicts our urban milieu? These are some of the questions that would be a matter of much public debate in the days to come.

In my opinion, there may be precipitating factors embedded in the family situation (like sibling rivalry), neighbourhood (peer pressure), education setting (ragging), in an overall environment of stress created by a society thriving on competition and inequitable distribution of and access to resources.

One would have to study these factors in each case to understand the tipping point, as it were, leading to the individual (the child) to take such a drastic step. In the end, it may either be a 'heat of the moment' decision, or a cool-headed and calculated one for the actor.

One should not be in a hurry to pass judgment on this issue. If stress was the only trigger, the number of victims would be in hundreds if not in thousands. Sociologist Emile Durkheim in his classic work on suicides had related the rate of suicide prevalent in any society to the concept of anomie, which he defined as a state of normlessness.

According to Durkheim, in any society undergoing rapid socio-economic change, individuals who have to suddenly adapt to a change in norms and values as a result of a rapid rise or fall in their status in society, experience anomie and are prone to committing suicide.

Robert Merton, an American sociologist and criminologist, developed Durkheim's theory further and came up with his theory of adaptation, propounding that whenever there is a dysjunction between the prescribed goals (for example becoming wealthy in a capitalistic society) and institutional means available to achieve the goal (for example the access to education), not everyone is able to achieve the prescribed goals even through they seem attainable. In such a scenario, individuals adapt differently.

One among the responses is that of rejecting the goals or the means or both and withdrawal from the mainstream, the extreme form of which could be mental illness or even suicide. These theories provide some insight into an issue as complex as suicide.

(The author is associate professor, Centre for Criminology and Justice, Tata Institute of Social Sciences)