Andhra’s Suicide Frenzy

Nearly 50 suicides and 300 heart attacks. It’s the toll news of YSR’s death has taken in the state

They say only Satya Sai Baba can save Pallari Ramanjenayulu. His face covered with an oxygen mask, the man slips in and out of consciousness in the noisy general ward of Anantapur General Hospital, 312 km from Hyderabad. Anantapur is where the godman was born. And this is where Ramanjenayulu quaffed down poison on hearing of the death of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy—YSR as popularly remembered.

“He finally opened his eyes today. Doctors who gave him a stomach wash say he has a 50:50 chance to live,” says his distraught wife Rangamma. The family of daily wage earners with a small land holding does not have the money to take him to Bangalore for further treatment, as suggested by doctors.

Though the 40-year-old man had made his suicidal intent clear at the local liquor shop, no one took the habitual drinker seriously. But once official confirmation of YSR’s death arrived, Ramanjenayulu locked himself in his house and consumed Lentrek, an insecticide. A neighbour saw him through the window and alerted others. “It took a while to break open the main door and rush him in an autorickshaw to the hospital,” says his brother, Venkatnarayana.

Ramanjenayulu saw YSR as a personal benefactor, an author of his destiny, a deliverer from hardship. A father of two sons, Ramanjenayulu had often asked his family to be thankful to the CM for waiving agricultural loans, giving fresh loans at meagre interest rates, doling out 4 kg of rice at Rs 2 per kg per person, and instituting schemes of medical insurance and animal husbandry. “He owed his life to YSR and was passionate about politics,” says his brother, “That’s a reason he attempted suicide.” Both brothers had worked as bonded labourers until their teens, despite having three acres of their own. “We are all daily wage earners,” says Venkatnarayana, “Thanks to NREGA, we have been able to live in our village itself instead of migrating (to town) in search of work. We owe all this to YSR.”

The family has spent Rs 3,000 in three days so far just to keep him alive, though.

Since YSR died, some 44 people have committed suicide in Andhra Pradesh, including seven women. Moreover, as many as 298 died of heart attacks, including 67 women.

All this, for a politician? It’s the sort of mass phenomenon that seems something of a sui generis theme in South India, particularly Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, but baffles observers everywhere else.

Speaking to Open, Dr G Prasad Rao, a psychiatrist based in Hyderabad, places some of the blame on the media hype surrounding the CM’s dramatic death, particularly the disinformation being dished out on his having survived the helicopter crash. The state’s beloved leader was alive and walking, said some wishful reports in the midst of all the mediababble after the craft lost contact and before the search party located the wreckage and bodies. After such feverish drama, the announcement took its own toll. “The 24 hours of non-stop initial hysteria affected the lower-middle and middle classes, who were direct beneficiaries of YSR’s policies,” says Dr Rao, “They were the ones who took the extreme step or those who suffered heart attacks.”

There seems to be a pattern to most of these suicides, the fear of deprivation being a common factor. At Narpala, also in Anantapur district, 70-year-old Malleshwara Reddy mans his tiny shop clad in just a dhoti. He has lost his wife, who used to share the responsibility. Baraddi Chanamma complained of chest pain once the chopper went missing. Glued to the TV set for some good news, the 60-year-old collapsed after anchors confirmed her worst fears. The family took her to a neighbourhood doctor who pronounced her dead. She had suffered a massive heart attack. “She was very healthy,” says Reddy, still in shock, “She’d just made and served me tea when the news came. Though we took her in an autorickshaw to a doctor, she did not survive.”

Chanamma was an ardent fan of YSR, who she saw as an angel who rescued the family from the bad phase it went through under Chandrababu Naidu’s stewardship. “We were farmers neck-deep in debt,” explains Reddy, “The drought in Bandlapalli (where NREGA was flagged off in 2006) complicated matters, and there were no government schemes to help us. We were forced to sell our land to get out of the two-decade-old debt trap. With a few thousand rupees in hand, we migrated to Narpala, 8 km away, and started a little shop in 2003. We have been staying at a rented house ever since.”

Such was her faith that Chanamma was sure her name would be listed among the houseless for the Indira Awas Yojana, as YSR had promised. Reddy also enlisted himself for a Rs 200 monthly pension scheme. The family of four, including a son and daughter-in-law, are eligible for 16 kg of rice at Rs 2 per kg. “She was under the impression that the family would lose all these benefits if YSR died. That shook her badly,” says son Shivaprakash, 28, who works as a lorry cleaner.

But not all cases bear a deprivation story. N Suresh Kumar, a 42-year-old bank employee in Hyderabad’s Kushaiguda, hanged himself after he heard of YSR’s demise. “He had everything going for him—a secure nationalised bank job, no marital discord, no loans and no adverse medical history. Yet, he hanged himself,” say perplexed police officers. Reports of Kumar’s suicide set off a chain reaction. Soon, there were more.

Alarmed by the numbers, YSR’s son, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, and acting CM K Rosaiah went on air to appeal to the public not to take such extreme measures. Jagan Mohan even proclaimed that his father’s soul would not rest in peace if people took their lives. Copycat suicides, according to Dr Rao, peaked in the first three days—fitting into a classic pattern. “The mass effect lasts for anything between 72 hours to a week,” he says, “Hopefully, the number of cases should come down now.”

Such wave-pattern suicides have a precedent. In Tamil Nadu, around two dozen supporters of MG Ramachandran (MGR) consumed poison or set themselves afire after an illness left the charismatic Tamil leader fighting for his life in 1984.

The figure fell to 12 after MGR died three years later. The demise itself did not spark a mass frenzy, perhaps because the makkal (people in Tamil) were reconciled to the ailing leader’s death.

In his book, Thamizharin Marupakkam (‘The Other Side of Tamils’), the Tamil scholar KP Aravanan notes that of the 15 Indians who took their lives in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, as many as 14 belonged to Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry. “As far as Tamil Nadu is concerned, it is the after effect of a sycophantic political culture,” says academic and political analyst C Lakshmanan, “Here, the politics is personality cult oriented. People mostly get attached to a movement—not based on ideology, but affinity for some personality.”

The south’s peculiar relationship with cinema has also had a role in this. Continues Lakshmanan, “A combination of Dravidian politics and matinee culture, which started in the 1960s, has stoked feelings of Tamil nationalism, and the politically charged youth’s compulsive urge to demonstrate love for the land and language often takes extreme forms. Where film dialogues are part of everyday conversation and actors are personal gods, any misfortune that befalls the idol is a family tragedy.” Andhra is not too dissimilar. In 1984, when Telugu actor-turned-leader NT Rama Rao was toppled as the state’s CM by his finance minister N Bhaskar Rao, eight people hanged themselves in protest.

The state has barely emerged from its seven-day mourning period for YSR. Displays of passion continue. V Ram Reddy, 33, was a well-to-do farmer from Warangal. In his suicide note, he said he was ‘dedicating my life to YSR, who had in turn sacrificed his life to the people’. An honourable exit, even if it doesn’t do YSR’s soul any good.

Additional reporting by KA Shaji

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Anil B. Lulla