Source: Telegraph India
“#ReportingToRemember news media for undermining the anxieties based on a life of discrimination, that drove 14 year old Dalit girl, Devika to suicide in Kerala, 2020. Instead the narrative framed her as a teenager upset over “not having a smartphone” , erasing the social exclusion she faced”
On June 1, 2020, 14 year old Devika, a Dalit girl was driven to commit suicide due to the structural oppression she faced as a Dalit student, especially exacerbated by the lockdown.
Devika belonged to a family of daily wage labourers, whose income was hit strongly by the sudden and complete lockdown imposed by the Indian government during the pandemic. Schools remained closed for the first few months of the lockdown after which the Kerala government announced that online classes would take place. The classes could be accessed via smartphone, and those who didn’t have one could access the classes using their TV. Those who didn’t have a TV would be provided with tablets. Although the government had given these assurances, no arrangements had reached students like Devika yet. Their family could not afford a smartphone and their TV had recently stopped working. Devika had also received the Ayyankali scholarship and was extremely anxious about losing it.
The media reported the incident in a matter which undermined Devika’s anxieties. All headlines framed her suicide as being caused merely due to not possessing a smartphone or not being able to attend online classes. The reports stressed on how there were alternatives to smartphones for attending online classes. All of this served to paint Devika as having unwarranted anxieties, ignoring that behind an immediate trigger, suicides are often caused by sustained mental pressures. Devika’s family's financial hardships, the uncertainty of their livelihood and future during the pandemic, the burden of performing well academically and availing of a scholarship, and the social exclusion she could have faced due to her caste in school, and finally, the immediate trigger of not being able to attend classes which showed the negligence of institutional mechanisms towards marginalized students, could all have been factors which drove Devika to take her own life. However, these structural issues were ignored for the sensational headline of a teenaged girl committing suicide over a problem that could have been managed, hence blaming her for her own marginalization.
References:
https://feminisminindia.com/2020/06/09/suicide-14-year-old-dalit-woman-kerala-misrepresented-media/
https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/kerala/2020/jun/02/lacking-smartphone-to-attend-online-classes-class-9-girl-sets-herself-ablaze-in-kerala-2151154.html
https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/news/india/keralas-experiment-with-virtual-classes-upset-over-not-having-smartphone-class-10-girl-commits-suicide/articleshow/76151031.cms
