One farmer or farm worker dies by suicide every hour
The agrarian crisis isn’t an abstraction. It shows up, year after year, in one statistic.
In 2022, the National Crime Records Bureau recorded 11,290 suicides among people in the farming sector — 5,207 farmers/cultivators and 6,083 agricultural labourers. That is at least one farming-sector death by suicide every hour, and a 3.7% rise over 2021.
A telling detail: more than half (6,083) were agricultural labourers — the landless who depend on daily wages, and who rarely feature in farm-relief headlines.
Where, and why
Maharashtra (4,248) recorded the most, followed by Karnataka (2,392), Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh. Researchers consistently link the deaths to debt, crop failure, volatile prices and the absence of a reliable income floor.
This connects directly to other gaps documented on this site: an unmet MSP-guarantee promise, a shrinking MGNREGA safety net, and farm incomes that didn’t double as pledged.
What a floor looks like
The constructive asks are concrete and non-partisan: assured remunerative prices, accessible crop insurance that actually pays out, debt relief that reaches labourers (not just landowners), and rural employment funded to meet demand.
Sources · Free to verify
This is a sourced explainer built on public data — not original reporting. Every figure traces to a source above.