Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India report: NCRB

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Accidental Deaths and suicides in India report: Relevance

GS 2: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.

According to the recently released Accidental deaths and suicides in India report by NCRB, India lost more people to suicide than Covid-19 in 2020.

Among the states, Maharashtra recorded the highest number of suicides across the country in 2020.
These five states—Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Karnataka—together accounted for 50.1% of the total suicides

India lost more than 1.5 lakh people due to suicides and close to 1.5 lakh people (According to Ministry of Health) due to COVID last year.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau report 2021, daily wage workers made up the largest share of total suicides—around one-fourth of total suicides, however, in most of the cases the reason of suicide was illness.
More than 12,000 students died by suicide accounting for over 8 per cent of total deaths.
In terms of gender, more men killed themselves, accounting for nearly 71 per cent of total suicides.

Agriculture witnessed higher number of suicides than in 2019 with the share of suicides among agricultural labourers increasing by 18%.
The number of suicides among farmers and cultivators have declined in 2020 as compared to 2019.

More than 13,000 train accidents across the country have killed nearly 12,000 railway passengers in 2020.
However, train accidents reduced significantly in 2020 as compared to 2019.
On an average, 32 people lost their lives every day in these accidents in 2020.
The report also shows that around 70 per cent of the railway accidents last year took place as passengers either fell off the train or came in the way while crossing the railway track.
Maharashtra ranks first and Uttar Pradesh second, both in terms of the number of accidents as well as deaths.

Due to the restrictions induced by the pandemic, the number of accidents has gone down throughout the country. An overall 9% decline has been reported in the country while the overall decline among states is 18.8% and among UTs, it is 21.6%.
As per the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety targets, fatalities were brought down to half of what they were in 2011.
At 48%, Chandigarh saw biggest dip in road crashes.