India to be epicentre of mental illness? Pai takes on Satyarthi, demands data

Aarin Capital chairman TV Mohandas Pai on Thursday took on Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi questioning his inference that India will very soon become the epicenter of depressive and anxiety disorders in the world.

Pai, a former director at Infosys, demanded data from Satyarthi for his claim. The trigger was a tweet from Satyarthi saying that India already has the highest number of mental illness cases in the world. “People don't know about it yet as it continues to be considered a stigma,” he said, expecting the country to become the epicenter of depressive and anxiety disorders very soon in the world.

Quoting the tweet, Pai demanded data on cases per million population “instead of making vague statements like this!”. India, he said, was not a small country, but has a population of 1.4 billion people, so every ailment will have large numbers.