Asian Journal of Social and Human Sciences

31-38

Authors: Pauline Ahoy

The National Crime Records Bureau of India reported in its 2012 annual report that 135,445 people committed suicide in India, of which 13,754 were farmers (11.2 %). Of these, 5 out of 29 states accounted for 10,486 farmer’s suicides (76 %) – Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala. In 2011, a total of 135,585 people committed suicide, of which 14,207 were farmers. In 2010, 15,963 farmers in India committed suicide, while total suicides were 134,599. In 2012, the state of Maharashtra, with 3,786 farmers' suicides, accounted for about a quarter of the all India's farmer suicides total (13,754). From 1995 to 2013, a total of 296,438 Indian farmers committed suicide. During the same period, about 9.5 million people died per year in India from other causes including malnutrition, diseases and suicides that were non-farming related, or about 171 million deaths from 1995 to 2013. Farmer suicides rates in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh – two large states of India by size and population – have been about 10 times lower than Maharashtra, Kerala and Pondicherry. In 2012, there were 745 farmer suicides in Uttar Pradesh, a state with an estimated population of 205.43 million. In 2014 there were eight farmer suicides in Uttar Pradesh. According to IFFRI study number of suicides during 2005–2009 in Gujarat was 387, Kerala 905, Punjab 75 and Tamil Nadu 26. While 1802 farmers committed suicide in Chhattisgarh in 2009 and 1126 in 2010. As per National Crime Records Bureau, the number of suicides by farmers and farm laborers increased to 12,360 in 2014 against 11,772 in 2013. Activists and scholars have offered a number of conflicting reasons for farmer suicides, such as monsoon failure, high debt burdens, genetically modified crops, government policies, public mental health, personal issues and family problems. My paper will be focusing mainly on the government policies leading to agrarian crisis.

53-68

Authors: Georg W. Oesterdiekhoff

The article compares the development of the First World nations to that of the Third World nations regarding the development of worldview, domestic and international politics, punishment law, and social affairs such as social participation, gender relations, and child care. The article shows that the whole premodern world before 1700 was characterized by an archaic worldview consisting of magic and superstition, by unfree political systems, by high rates of violence within and between nations, by a brutal punishment law, and by oppression of lower classes, women, and children. The era of Enlightenment after 1700 originated for the first time in history a complete modification of this premodern system, leading to democracy, civil society, constitutional state, to a decline of violence within and between nations, to the humane form of punishment law, to the emanzipation of lower classes and women, and to improvements of child care. This process of modernization and civilization was initially confined to Western countries and Japan. However, especially after 1945 the process of globalization caused modernization processes right across the whole world, including all dimensions of culture, law, morals, and politics mentioned. The social, political, and cultural gap, opened after 1700 in favor of Japan and Western nations, has been closing after 1945 and especially after 1975. Globalization therefore implies the worldwide success of the civilization process, as described, for example, by N. Elias or S. Pinker. The article argues that it is necessary and possible to describe the psychological dimension of these processes of modernization and globalization. The usual procedure amongst social scientists to describe these phenomena by ignoring the psychological dimension in favor of institutional and materialistic factors only is insufficient. The article demonstrates that developmental and cross-cultural psychology is capable to describe the psychological modifications of people going from premodern to modern societies. Moreover, these psychological advancements are carrying the modifications of political, social, judicial, and moral culture described. On the whole, the new approach called structural-genetic theory programme intends to replace previous approaches written by N. Elias, E. E. Hagen, A. Inkeles, and others.