Replying a question on the number of suicides in the country due to ‘financial crisis’, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs has informed the Rajya Sabha in the ongoing Budget Session that unemployment and indebtedness have claimed at least 25,000 lives in India between 2018 and 2020.

Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai informed today, on February 9, that a total of 9,140 people died by suicide due to unemployment while 16,091 people ended their lives due to indebtedness in this period. 

Unemployment claimed maximum lives in 2020 when at least 3,548 people ended their lives, up from 2,851 in 2019 and 2,741 in 2018. 

Also at least 5,213 people died by suicide due to bankruptcy or indebtedness in 2020, 5,908 in 2019 and 4,970 in 2018.

The Union Minister attributed these figures on the data provided by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

The NCRB data documented a total of 153,052 suicides in the country in 2020. This is an increase of 10 per cent in comparison to 2019. The rate of suicides has also increased by 8.7 per cent during 2020 over 2019. The rate of suicides is the incidence of suicides per 1,00,000 of the population.

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With 19,909, the majority of suicides were reported in Maharashtra. It was followed by Tamil Nadu (16,883), Madhya Pradesh (14,578), West Bengal (13,103) and Karnataka (12,259). These states accounted for 13 per cent, 11 per cent, 9.5 per cent, 8.6 per cent and eight per cent of the total suicides, respectively.

‘Family Problems’ and ‘Illness’ were the major causes of suicides which accounted for 33.6 per cent and 18 per cent of total suicides respectively in 2020. Meanwhile, ‘Bankruptcy or Indebtedness’, and unemployment accounted for 3.4 per cent and 2.3 per cent of total suicides in the pandemic year 2020.