Did falling real rural wages lead to a spike in suicides in 2020?

While the number of farmer suicides may have declined, there has been a spike in the number of deaths among farm labourers

The recent 'Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India' report for 2020 has pegged the number of farmer suicides at 5,579, almost 6.69 per cent lower than 2019, but the number of farm labourers committing suicide has grown by almost 18 per cent to 5,098 in 2020 from 4,324 in 2019.

In fact, a look at past data ever since this classification between farmers and farm labourers was made in the ADSI report of 2015, shows that while suicides by farmers--those who cultivate either in their own land or leased land--has declined, the numbers for farm labourers killing themselves has remained rather flat, barring a minor drop in a specific year.

In fact, the near 18 per cent rise in farm labourer suicides in 2020 is the fastest since the segregation in 2015.

Weeks before the ADSI suicide data for 2020 was released, another set of numbers sheds more light on the state of India’s farm sector. That is the Situational Assessment Survey (SAS) of NSO for 2018-19.

The survey reinforced a long-standing problem of the farm sector, which is the falling share of the crop sector in the average income of an agricultural household.

In 2018-19, the data showed that income from crop output dropped to 37.7 per cent from 47.9 per cent in 2012-13, while that from wages rose from 32.2 per cent to 40.3 per cent, making it one of the key sources of income for an agricultural household.

A similar trend was seen in Nabard’s Financial Inclusion Survey (NAFIS) of 2015-16.

The SAS survey also showed that number of farming households increased from 90 million to 93 million in six years (between 2012-13 and 2018-19), while the number of families not engaged in farming rose from 66 million to nearly 80 million in the same period.

Juxtaposing the two data sets (though both have different time sets), does point towards a trend which shows that while income from wages have predominantly become the main source of income of an average farming household in the country, if the same does not rise satisfactorily, distress tends to creep in seriously.

For 2020, ADSI data, some experts also say that the massive reverse migration of labourers from cities from villages due to Covid created a situation of excess supply driving down the already low wages leading to the increase in cases of suicides.

“The sharp rise in the number of cases of suicides by farm labourers in 2020 could be the result of reverse migration as job opportunities simply aren’t there in the rural areas where wages can be commensurate enough,” said Dr S Mahendra Dev, Director and Vice Chancellor of Indira Gandhi Institute of Developmental Research (IGIDR) told Business Standard.

Real rural wages

Data shows that immediately after the lockdown was relaxed after the first Covid-19 wave in 2020, there was an uptick in rural wages, both in real and nominal terms, in May and June.

However, thereafter since September wages started falling.

Himanshu, associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a visiting fellow at the Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi flagged this trend in an article published in Mint newspaper last year.

He wrote the boost to wages after the lockdown was eased was short-lived as wages declined thereafter until September.

By when real wages of general agricultural labour were down 0.3 per cent from a year earlier, while those of non-agricultural workers were down 1.3 per cent.

“When compared to levels two years ago, too, the real wages of general agricultural labourers and non-agricultural labourers declined 0.2 per cent and 0.8 per cent per annum. The extent of distress is evident from the fact that non-agricultural real wages are lower even compared to their level five years ago. The data also shows a sharp decline in nominal wages for almost all occupations since June. Clearly, the July-September quarter did not see a revival, but a worsening of rural distress,” Himanshu wrote in the piece.

With the SAS data over the years showing that wages had become an important component of average income of an agriculture household, any sharp drop in the same impact the agriculturists unless off course it gets adequate compensated by earnings from the crop sector.

For, agriculture labourers, drop in wages is much more disastrous as it leads to complete loss of income.