Suicides by daily-wage earners up 45% in 5 years, says NCRB report

Share in total suicides rose to 27.5% in 2023, says NCRB report

Daily wage earners continued to be the biggest chunk of those dying by suicides in the country in 2023 as they faced precarious reality of low-paid and insecure work, with little or no safety net.

 

Suicides by daily wage earners constituted more than one-fourth of total incidents of taking one’s own life in the country in 2023. Since 2019, suicides among daily wage workers have risen 45 per cent, reaching 47,170 in 2023.

 

Their share in total suicides grew to 27.5 per cent in 2023 against 26.4 per cent in the previous year, making them the single largest affected group, an analysis of Crime in India 2023 report, recently released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) shows.

 

Former chief statistician Pronab Sen pointed to the urban dimension of the crisis, saying “After Covid, the small and medium sector was hit hard, forcing them to shed a lot of workers.” 

 

He further added that even the largest companies had many temporary workers, who were laid off as the demand fell.

 

This left many urban daily wage earners with no work and mounting uncertainty.

 

The report also highlights rural distress. Even as suicides among those engaged in farming fell to 10,786 in 2023, a 4.5 per cent drop from the previous year, yet a closer look within farming reveals a sharp divide.

 

The share of suicides by all kinds of farming community eased to 6.3 per cent in 2023 from 6.6 per cent in the previous year, pointing to some stability at the aggregate level.

 

While suicides by cultivators fell by 21 per cent in five years till 2023, those by agricultural labourers rose by 41 per cent.

 

While cultivators may have benefited from support schemes or debt relief, labourers reliant on daily wages remain trapped in worsening rural distress.

 

Sen linked this rural imbalance to post-pandemic migration.

 

“After 2020, migration back from towns messed up the labour markets. That’s still playing out, too many people ended up competing for the same insecure work, swelling the ranks of landless labourers,” he added.

 

The NCRB data confirms what workers themselves have long been signalling: the crisis of livelihoods is no longer confined to the farm alone. It is spreading through the very backbone of India’s labour markets.