More business people die by suicide than farmers for 4th consecutive year

Rise in cases highlights a critical need for expanded mental health support and structural reform

A contractor* who lost around ₹200 crore in the stock market during the Harshad Mehta scam in 1992 recovered from extreme stress after consulting a mental health professional.

 

He was advised to stop avoiding phone calls from debtors and confide in his family and friends. He slowly dealt with angry debtors and made sacrifices in his lifestyle, enabling him to take small new orders and build back his financial stability.

 

An outdated notion that associates failure with shame and lack of support systems continues to affect the business community in India, shows a Business Standard analysis of government data over recent years including the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) ‘Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India 2023 Report’. As many as 12,313 business people died by suicide in 2023 — more than farmers.

 

 

There were 10,786 such cases among those engaged in farming. The number of business people dying by suicide has exceeded that of farmers every year since 2020.

 

“There has been a sense of loneliness and isolation among small businessmen,” said Mumbai-based psychiatrist Harish Shetty. Increased uncertainty and a difficult business environment may have been contributing factors, he said.

 

More government initiatives are required to tackle the issue, according to Shetty. Grassroots action and better data collection by the Health Ministry rather than the Home Ministry could help find more granular details to help address the widespread issue.

 

“Suicide worldwide in 2021”, a report the World Health Organization (WHO) released in May 2025, said India had very low-quality data on suicides. India reported 12.6 suicide deaths per 100,000 population in 2021, according to WHO’s data. While comparisons may be affected by the varying data quality in different countries, the available estimates suggest India’s numbers are worse than Brazil and China but lower than South Africa and Russia.

 

The WHO estimates over 727,000 deaths by suicide worldwide in 2021, according to the May 2025 publication. There were an estimated 177,567 cases in India.

 

“India is becoming the suicide capital of the world, how does being the fourth-largest economy matter?” Shetty asked.

 

“The NCRB data is based on police records…Death by suicide is frequently reported as due to illness or accident to avoid police investigation. The families of…(those dying by suicide)…usually do not want postmortems because of the fear of mutilation of the body, the time-consuming nature of the process, and the stigma involved. Statistics derived from police records hence under-report suicides,” noted the 2012 study ‘Suicide: An Indian Perspective’ from authors Rajiv Radhakrishnan of the Yale University School of Medicine and Chittaranjan Andrade of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences.

 

The majority of deaths by suicide among business persons in 2023 were reported in five states: Maharashtra (16.0 per cent), Karnataka (14.1 per cent), Tamil Nadu (8.9 per cent), West Bengal (8.0 per cent), and Madhya Pradesh (6.8 per cent).

 

Maharashtra accounted for 38.5 per cent of deaths by suicide among farmers; it was followed by Karnataka (22.5 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (8.6 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (7.2 per cent) and Tamil Nadu (5.9 per cent).

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*The example is a composite of multiple cases.

Tips to deal with crisis from mental health professionals:

• Share problems with loved ones
• Know that there is no shame with having a financial crisis
• Always take phone calls from debtors
• Don’t set a payback date that you may be unable to honour
• Let them know that loans will be payable as your situation improves
• Inform the police of any physical threats
• Enjoy small pleasures while cutting costs
• Continue working in some capacity even if the earnings are meagre, a routine is important
• Mental health professionals are there to help