Covid-driven suicides: Gig worker to hotelier, and the trauma of those left behind

On June 17, 32-year-old Rakesh Das, a Zomato delivery executive, quietly checked into an Oyo Hotel room in Noida after delivering food in a nearby area. He then shut the door on the world outside and inhaled liquid nitrogen which he had carried with himself.

Das, investigation revealed, had been combing the internet for ways to die since he lost his job at a private company in the wake of Covid. The birth of a child just a few weeks before the extreme act had added to the strain on the family’s meagre resources.

Das left a note explaining why he could take it no more. In his suicide note, Das said, “I am willfully doing it. I saw this technique of suicide on internet which says nitrogen gas kills without much pain. If I die because of this, please call on these contact numbers… I have Rs 5 lakh debt which I am unable to pay. I don’t have a job and the job I am getting is not what my heart allows me to do. I want to tell my family members that I love them.”

Rakesh, who was from Assam, had shifted to the national capital for studies and brought his parents to the city after he found a job.

Nearly six months after Rakesh Das passed away due to what is being attributed to pandemic-induced economic distress, his family survives on the two calls a week for beauty care services that his wife receives. Madhu takes care of her two children and ailing father-in-law with the money she makes by providing beauty care services at home. She had lost her job at a beauty parlour when the first wave of Covid swept India.

All her attempts to find a regular job at beauty parlours since have been turned down because employers are not comfortable giving a job to a mother who is compelled to get her seven-month-old daughter to work.

“Will you manage your daughter here or attend to clients,” prospective employers often ask Madhu. “For home services, some clients agree that I get my child along, but it becomes a tough task to strike a balance.”

Madhu’s life has been tough since her husband’s suicide in the middle of the second wave of COVID-19.

Covid, the cause

According to the latest data from National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 11,716 businessmen died by suicide in 2020, which is a 29 per cent increase over the 9,052 suicides in 2019.

Even though NCRB refrains from providing any specific cause-wise explanation of the suicide numbers, the ongoing pandemic is believed to have played a pivotal role.

Among the businessmen, tradespeople recorded 4,356 suicides, which is a nearly 50 per cent increase from the 2019, when 2,906 deaths by suicide were recorded. Trade is a part of business that involves buying and selling and in which one buys goods or services from another person.

Among the business category, 4,356 suicides were that of tradesmen and 4,226 were of vendors, while the rest of the cases were clubbed under ‘other businesses’ head.

It is widely known now that the year 2020 —when the first wave of Covid hit the country and a nationwide lockdown was imposed —witnessed more suicides in the business fraternity than the farmer community in which 10,677 died by suicide.

Madhu believes that Covid hit poor and middle class people living in cities harder than those living in villages.

“Big city people are always in a race to work like machines, and when there is no work they have nowhere to go and no support system. In cities, nobody is bothered to give financial or even emotional support,” the young widow says fighting tears.

Madhu remembers how her husband supported the family despite facing a financial crisis in 2020. When the first wave started, she lost her job at a beauty parlour. Few months later, Rakesh lost his job as a supervisor at Reliance Jio Fiber in Noida.

Experts believe that the pandemic almost wiped out small businesses pushing many small traders to take the extreme step.

“Whether the NCRB data shows that more business people than farmers died by suicide is a different matter. But there was a sudden surge in the number of suicides by the owners of MSME,” said professor Abhijit Sen, former member of the Planning Commission.
Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) account for about 99 per cent of all enterprises in India, comprising 63 million MSMEs across different industries. An Ernst & Young survey that covered 1,000 MSME entrepreneurs noted that over 70 per cent respondents were impacted by COVID-19 because of reduced orders, loss in business, dearth of raw material, and liquidity crunch.

In a cause for worry, Sen adds that the crisis in the MSME sector will continue as the present condition of small business entrepreneurs and vendors is not getting any better.

The Centre had announced measures aimed at addressing the liquidity concerns faced by MSMEs due to the COVID-19-induced lockdown. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) also announced a slew of measures to provide support to MSMEs and businesses facing an acute cash crunch due to the pandemic. However, a parliamentary panel report in July noted that MSMEs need more support and the stimulus provided by the government is “inadequate”.

The committee, chaired by Rajya Sabha MP K Keshava Rao, said that the Union government did not conduct any study to ascertain the extent of losses suffered by MSMEs due to the lockdown.

Due to lockdowns, the impact on the economy was severe, says professor Dipankar Sen Gupta, who teaches Economics at Jammu University. “The last two years have been more difficult for MSMEs that bore the brunt of the crippled economic engine.”

Prof Gupta thinks that big corporations have their cash savings and they have access to financial credit, but it was not possible for MSMEs. “Since many MSMEs don’t have access to financial credit, their crippled state haunted and distressed the owners more.”

“The government should provide some sort of insurance against absolute bankruptcy,” he adds. “It would involve substantial financial assessment from the government. In some cases it can be done by writing off the loan payments and in most cases it would be writing off interests on loans.”

“The suicides are impossible to avoid completely in a situation where economic distress is acute,” Sen adds.

Many point that the pandemic could have only accelerated the pace of distress that had already set in for MSMEs.

Experts believe that the after effects of demonetisation and the implementation of Goods and Services Tax exacerbated during the pandemic. In 2018, two years after demonetisation and a year after the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), deaths by suicide of businesspersons rose by 3 per cent, and in 2019, it number grew by 13 per cent.

Cornered and desperate

Financial stress left 21-year-old Yash Khanuja an orphan during the second wave of the pandemic. He recalls his late father Ranjit Singh Kannuja, 52, as a “visionary” businessman who felt cornered and desperate amid financial challenges posed by the lockdown in the wake of Covid.

On the day of Ranjit’s demise, Yash was in the gym oblivious to the repeated phone calls from his mother. By the time Yash called her back, she had had a nervous breakdown. The reason—the husband wasn’t receiving her calls.

It was late evening on October 16, 2021, when Yash managed to reach the Sai Carnation Apartment, from where his father ran the business. The front door was shut and Yash managed entry from the backside of the building. His father’s room was locked from inside and there was no response to repeated knocks. From the window, Yash somehow managed to unlock the door and get inside. He was stunned to see his father’s body hanging from a ceiling fan.

“Despite living in a joint family, my father lacked the family support during his difficult times,” Yash laments. “Someone in the family should have consoled him that he doesn’t need to worry about the business losses during the Covid19 pandemic and lockdowns. Those were hard and difficult times for everyone.”

Khanuja’s is the well-known business family from Patna—owning several hotels and event management companies.

Before the pandemic hit India, Ranjit had made an investment of around Rs 7 crore and constructed a banquet hall named ‘Umroa The Banquet’ on over an acre. “My dad got artisans and workers from Jaipur to give the feel of Jaipuri style weddings at the banquet,” Yash says. “But the moment he inaugurated it, the national lockdown was imposed and he had to pay Rs. 4 lakh per month as a rent for the land lease.”

Ranjit, however, didn’t lose hope, the son recalls. But when the second lockdown was imposed, he slipped into depression. “A few days before he died by suicide, he had expressed the fear that the third wave might further spell doom for his banquet business by disrupting the wedding season,” Yash said.

“He isolated himself and finally succumbed to the pandemic-induced trauma.”

Most traders running small businesses during the two lockdowns were in a condition where they had to survive under financial constraints, says Dr Zaid Wani, professor of Psychiatry, IMHANS (Institute of Mental health and Neurosciences), Kashmir, Srinagar.

“To sustain in this situation was a big challenge for them during pandemic,” he said. “But due to the lack of support system, be it financial or social, they took this extreme step. It’s a social support system that prevents suicide. But when you don’t have such support, a person breaks down and suicidal thoughts come to his mind.”

Many of these silent Covid casualties are a vicious unnoticed outcome of the pandemic.
“Farmer suicide is very old phenomenon in our country, but suicides particularly of small businessmen is a direct impact of pandemic,” said BM Kumaraswamy, an economist, based in Bangalore.

“Small businessmen weren’t allowed to work and they had already acquired huge loans and were in debt. Future for this business community and vendors is not very clear. And for the government, it will be a challenge to handle such a situation in the country as the overall economy is not on track. There won’t be any tax collections naturally and it will impact the society financially for sure.”

Meanwhile, moved by Madhu’s daily struggle for her family, Rakesh’s father, nearing 70 years of his life, has once again come on road, to sell lemons and ginger, despite his ailments.

“I am not able to stand on the road the whole day. The other day I wasn’t able to move from my bed. My health is not supporting me now. But what will my daughter-in-law do single-handedly,” he laments. “My son had brought us here with so much hope and so many dreams. But Covid killed him and all those hopes and dreams.”