Suicides and financial condition: Do they have any correlation

With farmer suicides snatching the limelight from the India growth story many a times and Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) being blamed for a sudden upsurge in the suicide rate in some of the Indian states, it becomes important to look into the matter from a technocratic point of view rather than a mere political approach in which the MFIs are being treated as a scapegoat. Do suicides and financial condition have any correlation: a question to which maximum people will have an affirmative answer. But, had this been the case Bihar and Orissa would have topped the chart here too like all other charts of dismay India prepares. However, to utter disappointment of the proponents of relation between poverty and suicides Bihar ranks lowest in Suicide rates in India much below the national average of 10.9 persons per Lakh population with a statistic of 1.1 persons per Lakh of Population. Even Orissa is below the national average with 10.8 persons per Lakh population. The places topping the list are Puducherry and Kerala at rank one & two respectively which by no means are poors states. Even Andhra Pradesh from where the devastating wind for MFIs arose and which has a suicide rate of 17.4 persons per lakh population is not a poor state.

So where does the actual problem lies. Sure financial distress is one of the many reasons for suicides. However it is not the only reason. More than it are important the level of distress, the distribution of income, social system etc. If we look at the states figuring in the accompanied chart we will find there is neither a positive nor negative correlation between suicides and financial condition.Not positive as both rich states like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh as well as the poor state of Chattisgarh appear up the order and not even Negative as poor Bihar and rich Punjab both figure low on the list. One factor that is worth considering is that are the rich states figuring high in the list facing a problem of suicidization of murder i.e. registering murder cases as suicide cases to save the socially influential culprits.
Thus, more than financial distress it is the problem of social system, pschycological phenomenon. What govt. needs to do is to do a careful study of factors fuelling these suicides and weed them out of the social system. Improving financial condition of farmers is one step but what is also important is reducing the social gap and putting control over different kinds of social exploitation which often appear to be a reason for suicide.