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Decriminalise suicide
Sep 19, 2012, 12.00AM IST, Times of India

Distress doesn't need discipline - it needs empathy and understanding.

The Union health ministry's move to have attempted suicide decriminalised is welcome. Following a similar observation by the Supreme Court, the new Mental Health Care Bill, 2012, likely to be presented in Parliament's winter session, argues it is time attempted suicide be treated not as a legally punishable offence but a psychological problem. Those trying to end their lives merit care and concern rather than incarceration and fines, as the IPC's Section 309 currently prescribes. This shift in the state's perspective on the very ownership of life is significant. Punishing those who have reached such a fragile state of mind, as to attempt ending their own life, reflects a frowningly paternalistic state, taking on the disciplining authority of an iron-handed guardian. This archaic attitude characterised an earlier age of monarchies, theocracies and colonial states when people were subjects, not citizens.

In the modern age, an enlightened state reaches out to those in distress, respecting an individual's right to his own life and recognising that complex strains could impact a being so hard, it is plausible - but hardly punishable - that they crack. Social or economic causes of such severe stress - often, the bullying students face, the harassment for dowry or male children women undergo, the failure of crops indebted farmers suffer - should be tackled seriously by the state. But those attempting suicide in depression or distress should be given the best counselling and the widest empathy to help them recover. Any enlightened state knows whose life it is anyway - the point for government is to assist and enrich this, not, as Michel Foucault remarked of an authoritarian 18 {+t} {+h} century French system, to discipline and punish it.