The mention of mental health and well-being in the 2026 Union Budget as part of core infrastructure, signals a paradigm shift: It positions emotional resilience, cognitive diversity, and wellbeing not as luxuries, but as essential systems that underpin economic productivity, social cohesion, and democracy. A bigger question in many minds is, does it signal investment in a critical undervalued infrastructure like human capital?
The recent focus on ‘brain economy’, by the World Economic Forum in January this year, signals global and futuristic investment from India. The brain economy concept is a powerful economic and strategic lens that elevates mental health from a health issue to an essential infrastructure, aligning perfectly with emotional resilience, cognitive diversity, and wellbeing as foundational brain capital.
India’s post-pandemic mental health burden, with 150 million affected (per NIMHANS), hampers its demographic dividend. Investing here yields exponential returns: every $1 in mental health spending returns $4 in economic benefits, per WHO. An investment in mental health is a double dividend; ie, mental health services to a larger population not only reduce burden on society but also build a populace with better cognitive capabilities, mental wellness and emotional resilience, which in turn offer competitive advantage and growth potential.
Here are some reasons why this investment could be a gamechanger for India.
The infrastructure imperative: Highways, railways, power plants, broadband drive progress by enabling connectivity and efficiency. Mental health serves as an analog for human capital. Cognitive neuroscience reveals that the brain’s neuroplasticity supported by neurochemicals like dopamine and serotonin, forms the neural scaffolding for learning and adaptation. When mental health falters, this scaffolding erodes. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates mental disorders cost the global economy $1 trillion annually in lost productivity, a figure projected to double by 2030 without intervention.
The diversity dividend: Cognitive diversity, fuels innovation similar to diverse data streams in AI networks. Neurodiversity research shows that diversity drives breakthroughs. Silicon Valley’s success owes much to neurodiverse teams; McKinsey reports diverse executive teams outperform peers by 35% in profitability. Suppressing this diversity through stigma or inadequate support is like running a supercomputer with faulty wiring.
Enables human flourishing: Human flourishing can be broadly described as enabling humans to become the best versions of themselves. Building awareness and competencies to enable flourishing includes sound sleep, social bonds, and purpose. Improving mental wellbeing leads to 21% greater profitability and 37% lower absenteeism. In infrastructure terms, wellbeing is the maintenance regime preventing decay: Neglected, it leads to epidemics of burnout.
Cultivating the shock absorber: Mental health focus builds emotional resilience, which is defined in psychology as the ability to rebound from adversity via emotional regulation and purposeful compassion. Resilience acts like shock absorbers on a national highway. Countries with high resilience, such as Finland (which tops global wellbeing indices), correlate with lower suicide rates and higher GDP per capita. A 2023 Lancet study linked resilient populations to 15-20% gains in workforce adaptability during crises like Covid-19.
The investment in mental health has started small, but needs to be long-term where wellbeing metrics replace and could yield a societal ROI through reduced health care costs. Four priorities are outlined below.
Cultivate well-being is a skill: Integrate mental health with education wherein in K-12 and university education should mandate neuroscience curricula on resilience, diversity, and wellbeing.
Design neurodiverse work pipelines: Establish new workforce pipelines encouraging neurodiversity hiring in civil services; resilience training for leaders via simulations.
Create tech infrastructure: Create AI-driven early warning systems, analysing social media sentiment for outbreaks. Leverage the power of technology to improve diagnostics wherein mental health grid-cut wait times can be reduced to hours, not month. Wait times for an autism diagnosis can be as high as eight months.
Community hubs: Set up 10,000 India-wide centres offering free biofeedback, therapy, and diversity assessments.
The announcement of a new NIMHANS campus and upgradation of existing mental health institutions in Ranchi and Tezpur is a first step towards framing mental health as core infrastructure. This is a first bold step from the government and one hopes it will work towards building a nation thriving on resilient minds, diverse cognition, and vibrant wellbeing.
This article is authored by Nandini Chatterjee Singh, head of the department, professor of psychology, Ashoka University.
