NCP blames Centre's policies for most daily wagers ending life in 2021

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Thursday blamed the policies of the Union government for the large number of daily wagers committing suicide in 2021, as revealed in data released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

The latest NCRB report has stated that one in every four deaths by suicide in the country were of daily wage earners. The Sharad Pawar-led outfit lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party-headed government at the Centre over the plight of daily wage workers. It is a shocking figure and it is happening because the unorganised sector has been crushed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He randomly announced the policy of demonetization (in 2016) and followed it up with a hasty and unplanned implementation of the GST (goods and services tax) system, said Mahesh Tapase, chief spokesperson, Maharashtra NCP. The coronavirus pandemic and the resultant lockdowns left small traders, artisans and labourers devastated, but the BJP government at the Centre never cared for them as it was busy restructuring NPA accounts of corporates, he said.