For some people, suicide is the only way to escape poverty

Hungry children’s screams proved too much.

ISLAMABAD/ KARACHI: Bashiran Bibi and her husband fought everyday because money was too tight. Their hungry children’s screams tormented her. She began begging in streets. But that didn’t help.

So the maid, 25, decided there was only one way to deal with crushing poverty. She jumped in front of a speeding train with her two sons and daughter, all under the age of 3.

“Bashiran told me the night before that it would be better for everyone if they all died,” said her mother-in-law, Barkat.Pakistanis react to widespread hardship in many ways. Some head abroad looking for jobs. Others are drawn to militant groups seeking to topple the state.

In the ten months to October of 2011, about 1,600 people decided that suicide was the only option, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). The previous year 2,399 people killed themselves and poverty was a significant factor, but a precise breakup was not available, the commission said.

Suicide linked to poverty is not unique to Pakistan.

Since the mid-1990s, an estimated 150,000 small farmers have committed suicide in India, mostly over debts, according to the Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University.

But Pakistan has nowhere near the economic power that India does, so tackling social ills could be more difficult here.

Growing economic pressures could push the suicide figure even higher in the South Asian nation where over one in five people live below the international poverty line of $1 a day.

Critics say alleviating poverty has never been a priority. In the 2011-12 budget, Pakistani government allocated 0.04 per cent of spending for social protection schemes. By comparison, just over 17.8 per cent went to defence, though some experts put the figure at 26 per cent.

Shahnaz Wazir Ali, special assistant to the prime minister on social affairs, argues the government has made enormous efforts to eradicate poverty including monthly cash grants to poor families headed by women. “The government has led a very targeted and focused approach,” she said.

People like Talib Hussain, 45, didn’t seem to benefit.

He borrowed money to start a livestock business but it folded. One creditor after another threatened to call the police if he didn’t pay up.

When the pressure became unbearable, he walked out of his thatch-roofed mud hut house early one morning, wrapped his turban around his neck and hung himself from a tree.

“Poverty took my father away. If someone had helped us maybe he would still be with us today,” said his weeping, 16-year-old son Riaz Hussain, who scratches out a living selling dried fruits and nuts from a stall. “We didn’t even know who to ask.”

Those who can’t bring themselves to commit suicide or infanticide, and still can’t find ways to provide for their children, sometimes abandon them.

The Edhi Foundation says last year it rescued 110 such babies.

Outside orphanages, the organisation leaves cots with signs above them which read “Do not kill your children, leave them here.”

Part of the problem is political leaders are often too consumed by power struggles or tussles with the Supreme Court and military to address social ills.

“My central thesis on this is nobody gives a damn. The political parties don’t care,” said Tahira Abdullah, a socio-economic development worker and human rights activist.

“There is an intense struggle for power now in Pakistan ... They all have noble-sounding intentions but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Fresh political uncertainty has again left many people wondering when their leaders will ever offer relief.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 16^th, 2012.