Suicide by unemployed

The Covid-induced lockdown of 2020 — the most stringent in the world — not only rendered millions of Indian citizens jobless but also forced thousands to end their lives. The Centre told the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday that 3,548 people died by suicide due to unemployment in 2020, well above the toll of 2,851 in 2019 and 2,741 in 2018. According to National Crime Records Bureau data, the highest number of such suicides in the first year of the pandemic was reported from Karnataka (720), followed by Maharashtra (625) and Tamil Nadu (336). The country’s unemployment rate had shot up to 23 per cent during the lockdown months of April-May 2020. Over the past year or so, this rate has been in the range of 6-9 per cent, except in May 2021, when it rose to around 12 per cent amid the peak of the second wave.

Despite the economic devastation triggered by the lockdown and other restrictions, the Centre and most of the states have done little to restore or generate jobs. Data compiled by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy shows that Haryana’s unemployment rate (23.4 per cent) is the worst in the country, followed by Rajasthan (18.9 per cent) and Tripura (17.1 per cent). Even as UP is better placed with a low rate of 3 per cent, various political parties have made grand promises in their election manifestos about providing jobs.

The Union government is banking on the Production-Linked Incentive scheme in key sectors, with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announcing in her 2022-23 Budget speech that 60 lakh jobs would be created over the next five years. This long-term goal is modest at best, considering the large-scale unemployment, and will not offer any immediate succour to the jobless who are gasping for survival. A job guarantee scheme for urban areas, on the lines of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), needs to be worked out. With joblessness increasingly fuelling despair, anger and unrest, as witnessed during the recent protests in Bihar, this burning issue can no longer be put on the back-burner.

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