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Journalism of Courage
In 2020, a year of pandemic-induced economic distress, suicides among “tradesmen” increased by 50 per cent — the highest across categories — compared to 2019, even as the broader business community recorded more such deaths than farmers.
According to the latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), as many as 11,716 businessmen died by suicide in 2020 compared to 10,677 farmers in the same year. Of these over 11,000 deaths, 4,356 were that of “tradesmen” and 4,226 were of “vendors”, with the rest being accounted for in the category of “other businesses”.
These are the three groups that the NCRB categorises the business community into while recording suicides.
Compared to 2019, suicides among the business community in 2020 increased 29 per cent. Suicides among tradespeople, meanwhile, increased from 2,906 in 2019 to 4,356 in 2020 — a 49.9 per cent jump.
The overall suicide figure in the country, meanwhile, has increased by 10 per cent to 1,53,052, the highest ever.
Traditionally, the business community has always seen fewer such deaths when compared to farmers. During the pandemic, and the resultant lockdowns, small businesses and traders suffered heavily, with many being forced to down shutters or default on loans.
“In the Covid year, small business has been impacted very badly. Till now it was believed that more farmers commit suicide due to crop failure and mounting loans. But this shows that businessmen have been under no less stress and the pandemic has made it worse,” Anil Bhardwaj, Secretary General of the Federation of Indian Micro Small and Medium Enterprises, told The Indian Express.
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