Daily wagers biggest group among suicide victims, ‘self-employed persons’ registered biggest rise in deaths by suicide in 2021: NCRB

Every fourth of the 1,64,033 people who died by suicide in India in 2021 was a daily wage earner, shows the latest report from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

According to the NCRB report, Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India, daily wage earners remained the biggest professional group among those who died by suicide in 2021 as they accounted for 25.6 per cent or 42,004 victims out of the 1,64,033 in the country last year.

The NCRB categorises the data into nine professional groups—students, professional/salaried persons, daily wage earners, retired persons, unemployed persons, self-employed persons, housewives, those engaged in the farming sector and others.

In 2020 as well, daily wage earners accounted for the highest share—24.6 per cent or 37,666 people who died by suicide—of the total 1,53,052 such deaths, according to NCRB data.

Not only the number of daily wage earners among such victims went up in 2021, but it also rose faster than the national average.

At the national level, the number of those who died by suicide increased by 7.17 per cent to 1,64,033—the highest level ever recorded—in 2021 from 1,53,052 in 2020. However, this number among the daily wage earner group rose by 11.52 per cent to 42,004 victims in 2021 from 37,666 in 2020.

Among the nine professional groups, the highest increase of 16.73 per cent was recorded among self-employed persons, as the number of such victims in this group increased to 20,231 in 2021 from 17,332 in 2020. The share of self-employed persons group in the total such cases in the country also increased to 12.3 per cent in 2021 from 11.3 per cent a year ago.

The ‘unemployed persons’ was the only group that saw a decline in death by suicide as their number came down by 12.38 per cent to 13,714 in 2021 from 15, 652 a year ago.

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