NEW DELHI: As many as 42,480 farmers and daily wagers committed suicide in 2019, an increase of about 6 per cent from the previous year, as the number of farmers committing suicide fell marginally while that of daily wagers increased 8 per cent.
According to the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data on accidental deaths and suicides, 10,281 farmers committed suicide in 2019, down from 10,357 in 2018, whereas the figure for daily wagers went up to 32,559 from 30,132. The suicide rate in the deeply stressed farming sector accounted for 7.4 per cent of the total suicides in the country, resulting in deaths of 5,957 farmers and 4,324 agricultural labourers, the NCRB said in a report containing the latest data. The total number of suicides in the country increased to 139,123 in 2019 from 1,34,516 in 2018. I
n 2015, the NCRB had published elaborate data on farmer suicides, including the reasons for suicides. However, the report released by the bureau on Monday omitted these classifications and instead gave a break-up in terms of males and females.
In 2019, a total of 5,563 male farmers and 394 female farmers committed suicide while agricultural labourers included 3,749 males and 575 females, said the report. States and Union Territories such as West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Chandigarh, Daman & Diu, Delhi, Lakshadweep and Puducherry reported zero cases of farmers and agricultural labourers committing suicide. Among daily wage earners who committed suicide, 29,092 were male and 3,467 female. According to the NCRB, states and UTs which reported increase in suicides in 2019 over 2018 were Bihar (44.7%), Punjab (37.5%), Daman & Diu (31.4%), Jharkhand (25.0%), Uttarakhand (22.6%) and Andhra Pradesh (21.5%). Among cities, the suicide rate (13.9) was higher than the national rate (10.4), with Kollam in Kerala and Asansol in West Bengal reporting the highest suicides rate of 41.2 and 37.8 respectively.
“Out of the mega cities, the four metropolitan cities – Chennai (2,461), Delhi (2,423), Bengaluru (2,081) and Mumbai (1,229) have reported higher numbers of suicides. These four cities together have reported almost 36.6 per cent of the total suicides reported from 53 mega cities,” said the report. The highest proportion of suicide victims (23.3 per cent) were educated up to matriculation while only 3.7 per cent were graduates and above, said the report.
Source: Economic times
