42,480 farmers and daily wagers committed suicide in 2019

As many as 42,480 farmers and daily wagers committed suicide in 2019, an increase of about 6 per cent from the previous year, as the number of farmers committing suicide fell marginally while that of daily wagers increased 8 per cent.

Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2020

Key-Points

10,281 farmers committed suicide in 2019, down from 10,357 in 2018, whereas the figure for daily wagers went up to 32,559 from 30,132.

The suicide rate in the deeply stressed farming sector accounted for 7.4 % of the total suicides in the country, resulting in deaths of 5,957 farmers and 4,324 agricultural labourers.

The total number of suicides in the country increased to 139,123 in 2019 from 1,34,516 in 2018.

States and UTs which reported increase in suicides in 2019 over 2018 were Bihar (44.7%), Punjab (37.5%), Daman & Diu (31.4%), Jharkhand (25.0%), Uttarakhand (22.6%) and Andhra Pradesh (21.5%).

Among cities, the suicide rate (13.9) was higher than the national rate (10.4), with Kollam in Kerala and Asansol in West Bengal reporting the highest suicides rate of 41.2 and 37.8 respectively.

Out of the mega cities, the four metropolitan cities – Chennai (2,461), Delhi (2,423), Bengaluru (2,081) and Mumbai (1,229) have reported higher numbers of suicides. These four cities together have reported almost 36.6 % of the total suicides reported from 53 mega cities.

The highest proportion of suicide victims (23.3 %) were educated up to matriculation while only 3.7 % were graduates and above, said the report.