The TIMES OF INDIA published an article last week.. I just cannot get the notion out of my mind about the subject matter: A village hit hard by suicides.. Mothers and brothers killing themselves.. people thinking en masse that there is some sort of demonic entity to blame.. others think pesticides. Some argue it’s crop failure.. a few blame alcohol…
It’s all detailed in the TIMES story about the Badi village in the Khargone district of Madhya Pradesh..
Get this: 381 suicides in just one year..
Sisodiya, the village sarpanch also believes that the cause of deaths is a “demonic presence” in the village, but psychiatrists said that the reason behind high rate of suicide cases is rational causes…
Dr Srikanth Reddy told the suicides are related to depression and schizophrenic episodes among villagers, possibly due to excessive use of pesticides, apart from financial stress..
Khargone is officially one of India’s 250 most impoverished and backward districts and many such areas are extremely superstitious. Earlier this year a seven-year-old boy in a village in the Indian state of Jharkand was forced to marry a dog because his horoscopes foretold his first wife would die young.
