When Homi J Bhabha died in Air India Flight 101, which crashed in January 1966 near Mont Blanc in the Swiss Alps, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi called his untimely demise a blow to India. The tragic death of India’s foremost nuclear scientist came at a crucial time for India’s atomic energy programme, which was just taking off. Conspiracy theorists pointed to possible sabotage by the CIA, aimed at obstructing India’s nuclear programme.
Nearly 50 years later, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and its parent, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), are again trying to cope with untimely deaths of key personnel — this time, in a spate of suicides. A DAE response to an RTI query filed by activist Chetan Kothari said 197 employees committed suicide across the Department’s 32 centres in the years between 1995 and 2010 (March). Those who died were between 29 and 50 years of age.
At BARC alone, three scientists committed suicide in March-April 2010. The issue found voice in Parliament, where it was flagged in Lok Sabha by Independent MP Inder Singh Namdhari and the Congress’ Anto Antony in 2011. But apart from the stray questions in the legislature, the high number of suicides has not stirred the national consciousness. Nor has it provoked debate among a public which is otherwise taken up with Bhabha’s legacy. Startlingly little has been done to investigate these deaths in a community that is integral to India’s defence capability and energy security
The issue raises some questions: Do the high number of deaths reflect the seemingly dark work environs of the Indian nuclear programme? Or does it reflect the frail side of the Indian psyche?
Counting deaths In December 2010, CPI(M)’s P Rajeev asked in Rajya Sabha whether the number of suicides was increasing at nuclear facilities and whether the departments had conducted inquiries into the matter, one of the few times when the matter came up for a debate at the national level. V Narayanaswamy, the then Minister of State for Planning and Parliamentary Affairs responded that the cases of unnatural deaths between 2005 and 2010 in the DAE had been analysed to find an answer. He said that of a total of 29 deaths, 22 were alleged to be suicides. Of the 22, one person had committed suicide as a result of work-related discomfort and the others because of personal or family reasons, the Minister added.
In the same year, a member of the Shiv Sena picked up the issue and quoted Kothari’s RTI’s figure in the Maharashtra Legislative Council, saying it was important to get to the bottom of the matter.
To cite a few cases: At BARC, five scientists committed suicide by hanging: Avdesh Chandra in 2000; Titus Pal, Ashutosh Sharma, and Soumik Chowdhary in 2010; and Uma Rao, a retired scientist, in 2011. Apart from them, Akshay P Chavan, an employee, allegedly committed suicide by jumping from the balcony of his flat in April 2010. Likewise, Subhash Sonawane, a tradesman of the waste management division, was suspected to have committed suicide in April 2010. According to BARC officials, Sonawane was undergoing treatment for schizophrenia. His body was recovered from a well in Mumbai’s Anushakti Nagar.
A slew of suicides has been witnessed in other DAE centres as well. In 2008, Jaswant Rao, an assistant mechanical engineer in Indian Rare Earths, was suspected to have taken his life. Scientist Dalia Nayak of Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, allegedly committed suicide by swallowing mercuric chloride in 2009. A year later, Tirumala Prasad Tenka, a scientist with the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology at Indore, hung himself at his residence. In a suicide note he had alleged abuse by seniors.
Finding the reason Sekhar Basu, Director of BARC, argues that the percentage of suicides among the fraternity is in keeping with the national average. Referring to data from 19 centres of the DAE, while speaking to BusinessLine , he says, “The number of deaths due to suicide is less than 100 (69 to be precise) over a period of 20 years and over 60,000 employees work at the DAE. So, this would amount to about six deaths per lakh per year. To the best of my knowledge the number of suicides is much more in the Indian population, involving different ages, regions, demographic backgrounds and gender.”
The rate of suicide in India (2012 data) is 20.9 per 100,000, across all age groups, according to the WHO’s Preventing Suicide report. Given this, around 200 suicides occurring over 20 years does not seem statistically alarming.
Psychiatrist Lakshmi Vijaykumar, member of WHO’s International Network on Suicide Prevention and Research, and one of the editors of the report, agrees. At the same time, for an organisation as important as DAE, the chain of events should be worrying. Hence, she believes that each suicide is important and the underlying reasons need to be looked into.
Vijayakumar, who is also the founder of Sneha, a suicide prevention organisation in Chennai, says, “The reasons for committing suicide are complex, there is no ‘one’ cause for it,” she adds, “since suicide is multi-determined and results from the interplay of various factors”. These include biological (genetic disposition to mental disorders), psychological and environmental stressors (work and family-related).
According to the National Crime Records Bureau there is no single reason for suicide. In fact, ‘other causes’ (34.8 per cent) dominate family problems (24 per cent), illness (19.8 per cent), and failure in romantic relationships (3.3 per cent). For about 40 per cent of the suicides there is no identifiable cause. “Hence, we tend to rely on what are called psychological autopsy studies, which look at each suicide from psychological and social angles to arrive at some conclusion,” she adds.
As for the nuclear fraternity, Vijayakumar says individuals predisposed to depression and suicidal tendencies may find these exacerbated or triggered by the stress of working in a high-pressure job, as well as by the chemicals and materials he or she interacts with in the work environment. It is no secret that the work environment at many of India’s organisations that are conducting sensitive operations is stressful (See: ‘It’s a bit like a pressure cooker’) .
Mindful of the increasing number of suicides, the DAE has since 2010 made it mandatory for all job applicants to pass a psychological test before being hired. But it is unclear if anything has been done to check on mental health once people are hired.
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