-TheWire.in According to NCRB data for 2014, the suicide rate for ‘Housewives’ was more than double that of farmers, though the latter gets far more media attention. What does this really indicate? In 2014, National Crime Records Bureau data showed that 20,148 Housewives took then own lives across the country. This amounts to approximately 18% of all suicides that year. A recent article in the Economic and Political Weekly by political scientist Peter...

-BBC More than 20,000 Housewives took their lives in India in 2014. This was the year when 5,650 farmers killed themselves in the country. So the number of suicides by Housewives was over 250% more than the farmers. They also comprised 47% of the total female victims. Yet the high number of homemakers killing themselves doesn't make front page news in the way farmer suicides do, year after year. In fact, more than 20,000 Housewives...

-Economic and Political Weekly The patterns of suicide in India are quite different to those observed in industrialised societies. Those differences must lead us to question many generalisations which almost approach sociological "law" such as the protection against suicide afforded by marriage. This paper contrasts media coverage of farmer suicides in India with the near total neglect of the suicides of Housewives, though there are more than three housewife suicides for...

-Business Standard The lens with which we report India's farm crisis has to change As we head for another year of trouble in the countryside, it is time to discard the enduring media tropes of rural distress. Like the image of a grizzled Indian farmer, framed against his parched field looking up at an unrelenting sky. Or the all too pervasive conflation of rural distress with farmer suicides. Such characterisation offers the...

-Brookings Institution India Center In  this  paper,  the author studies  the  data from  the  National  Crime  Record  Bureau  (NCRB)  of  India  and disaggregate  across  demographic  and  leading  causes  of  suicides. The author finds  that  mental  and  physical health  are  the  leading  causes  of suicides  in  India  (20%)  while  the  often  cited  factor,  indebtedness, causes  significantly  lower  number  of suicides  (less  than  5%).  Among  the  different  demographic categories, Housewives report the largest...