BENGALURU: Unemployment and poverty pushed at least 10 Indians — nine men and one woman on average — to kill themselves every day in 2018, while another 20 of them killed themselves daily because of addiction to drugs and alcohol.The information was accessed from the latest data on suicides released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) on Friday (January 3). Overall, India saw 1.34 lakh suicides in 2018, registering a 3.6% increase from the 1.3 lakh such cases in 2017. Comparatively, suicide because of joblessness grew by 14%, while deaths because of family problem — which accounts for 30.4% of all suicides — reported an increase of 4.8%.After family problems, illness, accounting for 18% of all deaths stood second, followed by marital problems, which accounted for 6.2%. Deaths due to these two causes also grew by 14% compared to 2017.Between 2014 and 2018, India lost a total of 45,743 people to these three causes — joblessness, poverty and addiction, of whom 12,373 and 6,957 committed suicide because of joblessness and poverty, respectively.In 2018, more than 2,700 people in India committed suicide because of unemployment, at the rate of seven every day, which is, on average, one more suicide per day compared to 2017, which saw more than 2,400 such cases. Similarly, poverty pushed three people to death each day in 2018 with a total of 1,202 deaths, a slight increase from the 1,198 deaths in 2017.“If this data is not critical motivated, it triggers an idea that I've been mooting for a while. This country needs MSME universities. We must move ahead from the 1960s and 1970s idea of education,” Prof Charan Singh, former senior economist at IMF and now CEO of EGROW Foundation said.He added that this will do two things: One, create employment and two, remove people from poverty.Of the people who killed themselves because they didn’t find a job, 20% were aged between 18 and 45 years, while another 10% were between 45 and 60 years of age. About 11% of these were women.Among those who committed suicide because of poverty, a majority of them (469) were in the age group of 30-45 years and women accounted for 15%.Bengaluru-based psychiatrist Jagadish A, says: "Joblessness affects both the white collar and blue collar workers. If things like children's education, home and vehicle loans haunt the white collar workers losing jobs, the complete inability to take care of the family affects the poor."Aside from this, drugs and alcohol claimed nearly 20 lives a day with 7,193 suicides — more than 1,900 of whom were aged between 45 and 60 years — including 306 women.Of the more than 7,000 deaths because of addiction, 1,908 of the total deaths were aged between 45 and 60 years, while 1,774 were between 18 and 30 years."Alcohol and drugs combined with depression can lead to suicidal tendencies. We see this commonly among patients. Alcohol is a double-edged sword, if you are happy and toasting champagne, it can lift your mood, if you binge because you are depressed, it can push you to suicide," Jagadish said.