The other day I happened to see the July 25, 2010 issue of the news magazine, The Week. The big headline screaming from the cover caught my attention: every third day an Indian soldier kills himself. Poor chaps, I said to myself. Their life must be extremely stressful. This is absolutely unacceptable, unconscionably disgraceful. Perhaps the country and the managers of the armed forces are not doing enough to look after these brave soldiers who not only sacrifice their lives in the service of the nation but also take them away because the ungrateful nation is not doing enough for them.
The guilt-inducing image stayed on in my mind a couple of days. That is when it occurred to me that I should find out how much worse off these soldiers were compared to the rest of India. After all there are occasional suicides in other sections of society as well.
What I found out surprised me.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau (http://ncrb.nic.in/), there were 125,017 suicides in India in 2008 when the country’s total population was 1153 million. This works out to 10.8 persons for every 100,000 people. The eleven-year (1998-2008) average is 10.6.
If a soldier kills himself every third day, there must be 122 suicides a year. As there are 1.3 million regular troops in India, the suicide rate among soldiers works out to 9.4 for every 100,000. While it is an unacceptably high rate, and something should be done to reduce it, it is less than the national average.
The Week’s headline is truthful; so is the statement that the suicide rate among soldiers is less than that of the general population. The first one arouses our indignation; the second one perhaps gives us a slight sense of relief.
This is what framing does. We often fail to sell many of our excellent proposals because they are not framed in a way that would touch our target’s emotions. We may discover, to our horror, that some inferior proposals get sold on the strength of their smart framing.
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