One in every four Indians to die by suicide in 2021 was a daily wage earner. In 2020, daily wage earners accounted for more than 35,000 of the nearly 150,000 recorded suicides in the country.

More than 90% of India’s workforce is engaged in the informal sector. That’s a huge number in a country with 1.4 billion people. A large number of them survive on whatever they are paid after a hard day’s work, and they lead very difficult lives. Finding work is a daily struggle. Then there is social discrimination and exploitation. Many get sucked into the debt trap.

Are welfare schemes run by the government not adequate? What can be done to make their lives easier? In this edition of WorklifeIndia, we discuss what’s causing the increase in suicides among India’s daily wagers.

Presenter: Devina Gupta Contributors: Nikhil Dey, founder, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan; Nida Ansari, labour rights activist, co-founder of Mazdoor Kitchen; Palle Ajay Swaero, IT consultant at LibTech India, son of daily wage worker