Indian Institute of Public Health, Hyderabad, Public Health Foundation of India, Hyderabad, Telanga State, India.
Division of Psychiatry, University College London, London, UK.
Anthropol Med. 2021 Dec;28(4):558-575. doi: 10.1080/13648470.2021.1993630. Epub 2021 Nov 3.
Nearly 4,00,000 farmers committed suicide in India between 1995 and 2018. This translates into approximately 48 suicides every day. The majority of suicides were those from 'backwarded' castes including Dalit farmers. This ethnographic study on cotton farmer suicide reports narratives of surviving Dalit families. The results reveal that financial and moral debt when accrued within a web of family and caste-related relationships result in patterns of personal and familial humiliation, producing a profound sense of hopelessness in the Self. This loss of hope and pervasive humiliation is 'cultivated' by a cascade of decisions taken by others with little or no responsibility to the farmers and the land they hope to cultivate as they follow different cultural and financial logic. Suicide resolves the farmers' humiliation and is a logical conclusion to the farmer's distress, which results from a reconfiguration of agricultural spaces into socially toxic places, in turn framing a local panopticon. The current corona virus pandemic is likely to impact adversely on peoples who are culturally distanced.
1995 年至 2018 年间，印度近 40 万名农民自杀。这相当于每天约有 48 人自杀。大多数自杀者是来自“落后”种姓的人，包括达利特农民。这项关于棉农自杀的民族志研究报告了幸存的达利特家庭的叙述。研究结果表明，在家庭和种姓相关关系的网络中积累的财务和道德债务会导致个人和家庭的羞辱模式，从而对自我产生深深的绝望感。这种希望的丧失和普遍的羞辱感是由他人的一系列决定“培养”的，这些决定几乎没有或根本没有对农民和他们希望耕种的土地负责，因为他们遵循不同的文化和财务逻辑。自杀解决了农民的羞辱感，也是农民困境的合乎逻辑的结论，这种困境是由于农业空间重新配置为社会毒害的地方，从而形成了一个当地的全景监狱。目前的冠状病毒大流行可能会对文化上疏远的人产生不利影响。
