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At least 10,546 persons involved in the farm sector ended their lives in 2024, accounting for 6.2 per cent of the total number of suicides in India, which was 170,746, according to the Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India report 2024 released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) on May 7, 2026.
The 2024 figure is marginally lower to 2023 when 10,786 people took their lives. At least 28 farmers and agricultural labourers die by suicide every day in the country. The highest number of suicides in the sector were recorded in 2022 at 11,290 and there has been a consistent decrease since then. But not much has changed on ground, show the trends over the last five years as at least one farmer still dies by suicide every hour in India.
Another worrying trend revealed by the recent NCRB data was that deaths by suicide of agricultural labourers — those depending on daily wages from farming activities — was higher than farmers/cultivators.
Among the 10,546 persons engaged in farming, at least 56 per cent (5,913) of those who died by suicide were agricultural labourers, the highest in five years. In 2020, the suicidal deaths among these accounted for 47.75 per cent of the total in farm sector.
The percentage share of suicides by farm labourers increased for the first time in 2021. The ratio of suicides among this group has seen a continuous increase since then.
This is significant because over the years, the dependence of an average agricultural household for its income has been increasing on wages from farming rather than crop production.
While the share of such deaths among cultivators had been declining, the percentage share of suicides by cultivators increased marginally in 2024 to 43.93 per cent, up from 43.48 per cent in 2023. This slight rise comes after a consistent decline in their share of farm-sector suicides since 2021.
Maharashtra saw the highest suicides in the farm sector with 3,824 deaths by suicides by farmers and agricultural labourers. Not only was this number the highest, the state contributed to 36.26 per cent of all deaths by suicide cases of those involved in agriculture. While the NCRB report does not mention the reasons behind these deaths in the farm sector, it must be noted that at least 20,37,651 hectares of cropped area was affected due to extreme weather events, including floods, in Maharashtra in the year 2024. This accounted for almost 50 per cent of at least 40,72,523 hectares cropped area affected due to extreme weather events in the country, revealed India’s interactive atlas on weather disasters.
The second-highest number of cases were recorded from Karnataka (2,971), followed by Madhya Pradesh (835), Andhra Pradesh (780), Tamil Nadu (503) and Chhattisgarh (486).
However, Karnataka saw the highest increase in number of suicides among all states — a 22.61 per cent rise, when compared with 2023. The second-highest increase was in Rajasthan (14 per cent), followed by Madhya Pradesh (7.46 per cent). Andhra Pradesh, while recording the fourth-highest number of cases, actually reported a decrease of 15.67 per cent from 2023.
Among Union Territories (UTs), Puducherry had not reported such cases between 2019 and 2022. However, the UT recorded 10 cases in 2023, a figure that increased to 33 farm-sector suicides in 2024 — all of them among farm labourers. This has been the steepest increase among all states and UTs, with suicides rising by 230 per cent, or more than threefold, within a year.
