Suicides in Rural India

Book Review: Suthar S. K. (2022) Dilapidation of the Rural: Development, Politics, and Farmer Suicides in India, London: Palgrave Macmillan. 210 p

Abstract

This review presents Sudhir Kumar Suthar's book addressing the issue of farmer suicides in India. The problem of farmer suicides in India is widely recognized by agrarian and rural scholars for several decades. However, the author disputes the proposed explanations of farmer suicides, which tend to primarily focus on economic factors. S. Suthar suggests his own explanation, somewhat Durkheimian in nature, which points to the deterioration of the social structure of traditional rural India. This decay results in the social structure's inability to support and safeguard rural community member, preventing them from committing suicides. The author provides a detailed analysis of the specific aspects that have deteriorated and how these changes have impacted suicides. He underscores the importance of public spaces and extensively describes how they are losing their function of strengthening social solidarity. He explores the decline of the traditional collective actions within rural communities and the erosion of family relations. The main catalysts of transformation, and also destruction, of traditional rural India are the market and the state, which are tearing apart its social fabric from different angles. The author thoroughly considers how market capitalist relations, as well as the state policies promoting rural modernization, displace and substitute traditional social bonds in rural India.