“The Rs 25,000 cash in hand we had, it was all spent on food while sitting idle during the lockdown. What will we do after this? Because of these financial troubles, I am ending my life story,” read the suicide note left behind by 53-year-old Raghuveer Singh. A resident of the Jagdishpur locality, in the city of Agra in Uttar Pradesh, Singh died by suicide on 22 June. Sachin Kumar, Singh’s nephew, told me, “Uncle had been searching for work for the past ten days but could not find any work.” Kumar added, “He used to come to our house during the lockdown and worry about how the family would make ends meet.”
The nationwide lockdown to combat the novel coronavirus, which came into force on 25 March, has devastated the Indian economy across the board. Daily-wage earners, migrant labourers, farmers and workers in the unorganised sector, who account for almost eighty percent of India’s workforce, have struggled to earn a living over the past three months. The lockdown necessitated social distancing, which disrupted normal community-based support systems. This was an added stress over and above the widespread financial insecurity. A week into the lockdown, mental-health experts started putting out cautionary messages about the possible effects of the lockdown on the populace’s mental health. While there is no official collated data as of yet on the number of suicides across the country during the lockdown, media reports, anecdotal evidence and independent databases maintained by scholars seem to suggest a spike in the numbers of deaths by suicide.
Kumar told me that Singh worked as a leather cutter and the eldest of his four children had joined him in the trade. Two of his children are still in primary school. Singh’s whole family lived in a one-room apartment, which cost them Rs 3,500 per month in rent. Kumar lost his father in February this year, and he said that Singh had been worried since then. “After the lockdown opened, the trouble increased,” Kumar said, since there was no work available even after the fourth phase of the lockdown ended on 31 May. He said it was the eldest son who found Singh and they rushed him to the Jeevan Jyoti Hospital, where he was declared dead.
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