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A Village Burnt Overnight: Tears, Loss and Survival in Dhamangaon Blaze

  Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...

Failed love: Teenage girls more prone to suicides than adults

TEENAGE girls are more prone to committing suicide than adults when it comes to failed love as ratio of female suicide is 30 per cent more than male suicide under 18 years while ratio of male suicides is more than 26 per cent than female in adults.
According to National Crime Record Bureau’s (NCRB) data, 665 women below 18 years committed suicide due to failed love in year 2018 as compared to 466 men who ended lives due to same reason in that period. Suicides by women were 30 per cent more than males in that age group.
However, the trend took a big turn in above 18 years age group where 39 per cent more men committed suicide than women. A total of 2611 men ended their lives due to failed love while number of women for the same reason was 1600.
Family problems and illness were the major causes of suicides which accounted for 30.4 per cent and 17.7 per cent of total suicides respectively during 2018. Marriage related issues caused 6.2 per cent, drug abuse 5.3 per cent, love affairs 4.0 per cent, bankruptcy or indebtedness 3.7 per cent, failure in examination and unemployment 2.0 per cent each, professional/career problem 1.3 per cent and property dispute 0.9 per cent were other causes of suicides. Government servants accounted for 1.3 per cent (1,707 out of 1,34,516) of the total suicide victims as compared to 6.1 per cent (8,246 out of 1,34,516) of total victims from Private Sector Enterprises. Employees from Public Sector Undertakings formed 1.5 per cent (2,022 out of 1,34,516) of the total suicide victims, whereas students and unemployed victims accounted for 7.6 per cent (10,159 victims) and 9.6 per cent (12,936 victims) of total suicides respectively. Self-employed category accounted for 9.8 per cent of total suicide victims (13,149 out of 1,34,516).
Out of total 92,114 male suicides, maximum suicides were committed by daily wage earners (26,589) followed by self-employed persons (12,175) and unemployed persons (10,687). A total of 42,391 females committed suicides during 2018 in the country. A total of 22,937 females (54.1 per cent) who committed suicides were housewives followed by students (4,790) and daily-wage earners (3,535).

10,349 farmers commits suicide in India in 2018

Of the 1.34 lakh suicides, 10,349 deaths occurred in the farming sector. This includes 5,763 farmers and 4,586 agricultural workers. These cases accounted for 7.7 per cent of total suicides in the country. 
The 2018 statistics showed that the number of suicides in the farm sector has come down marginally, from 10,655 suicides in 2017. Maharashtra reported 3,594 farmers suicide in 2018 and 3,701 in 2017 while Karnataka registered 2,405 suicide cases in year 2018 and 2,160 in year 2017. These two states top the list of farmer suicides.
Out of 5,763 farmer/cultivator suicides, a total of 5,457 were male and 306 were female during 2018. Out of 4,586 suicides committed by agricultural labourers during 2018, 4,071 were male and 515 were female.

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