The beautiful and the damned

Listen to excerpts from Outlook's Suicide Isn't A Moral Question issue, by Pragya Vats.  #Suicide #OutlookMagazine

Transcript

00:00 This is Pragya and I bring to you excerpts from the latest issue of Outlook,

00:04 "Suicide isn't a moral question."

00:07 The issue looks at serious public health concerns that suicide poses.

00:11 7,03,000 people die by suicide every year, according to the World Health Organization.

00:17 Suicide is a political, economic, societal, cultural and mental health question.

00:23 September 10th is World Suicide Prevention Day

00:26 and the issue delves into farmer suicide, student suicide and suicides that have been caused by trauma.

00:33 India decriminalized Suicide with Mental Health Act in 2017.

00:38 A part of the cover story of Outlook looks at the human-made disaster in Himachal.

00:43 The Beautiful and the Damned by Chetan Mahajan and Ananya Mahajan.

00:47 Chetan lives in Satkhol village in Uttarakhand where he runs the Himalayan writing retreat.

00:52 Ananya is an environmental policy research based in New Delhi.

00:56 Kunal Chand is not harvesting the ready crop of cauliflower this year.

01:00 My potato and pea crop was completely destroyed.

01:03 Gobi survived but it will all be thrown away.

01:05 The loss is 80,000 rupees, he says.

01:08 Kunal Chand is a resident of Soja, a village near Kulu Valley.

01:12 Roads on both sides of the village were washed away in the recent floods,

01:16 cutting the village off from the local mandi.

01:18 He was still lucky because his land did not get damaged.

01:21 Panki Sud, another Kulu resident, was not so fortunate.

01:25 He owns a piece of land close to the Beas river.

01:28 During the flood, the Beas changed its course and the land is now a part of the river.

01:33 Most politicians throw up their hands and blame these disasters on climate change.

01:38 They aren't wrong. The climate definitely is changing.

01:41 An 84-year-old man in Kulu claims that he has never seen such concentrated rain and hail in his lifetime.

01:49 Climate change is a threat multiplier for disasters like the ones we are seeing in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh,

01:55 says Joyadip Gupta, the editor of The Third Pole,

01:58 an online platform focused on watershed management in the Himalayas.

02:02 But it is also being used as an excuse for ill-planned development.

02:06 It is easier to deflect blame onto rich countries for their emissions.

02:10 It camouflages the fact that roads and buildings have been built

02:14 without any consideration of the guidelines.

02:17 Same for dams and bridges, he adds.

02:20 and more read the latest issue of Outlook.