AI as a Mirror of India’s Suicide Crisis

Imagine training an AI model the way we are “training” our children today.

1. We feed it only one kind of data
   We stuff the AI with millions of solved JEE/NEET papers, rank lists, wedding expense spreadsheets, and societal approval metrics (“settle abroad”, “government job”, “big fat wedding”).
   We never feed it data on happiness, mental peace, creativity, failure-as-learning, or love without conditions.→ The AI learns that the only “correct output” is 99.99 percentile, foreign salary, a 3-BHK EMI, and a viral wedding hashtag.
2. We punish every small error brutally
   If the AI’s accuracy drops from 99.9% to 99.7% in one mock test, we call it “failure”, shame it publicly, cut its pocket money, compare it with the neighbour’s model.
   We never reward curiosity, originality, or resilience.→ The AI starts believing that a single low score means it is worthless garbage.
3. We keep increasing the pressure (parameters)
   Every year we double the training hours (tuitions + school + coaching = 16 hours a day), hike the fees (like international school fees), add new benchmarks (Olympiads, SAT, foreign trips, coding bootcamps on top of everything).
   The model starts overheating, hallucinating, breaking down.→ In real life, that “overheating” looks like anxiety, depression, self-harm, and finally suicide.
4. We never update the loss function
   The AI is still optimising for 1950s Indian society’s loss function:
   “Minimise society’s gossip, maximise visible status.”
   It has no idea that the real goal should be “maximise lifelong well-being and contribution”.→ So even if the child (or the parent) is dying inside, the model keeps saying: “Keep going. Rank 1 is the only acceptable output.”
5. When the model finally crashes (suicide), we don’t change the training data
   We say “it was weak”, “couldn’t handle pressure”, “one weak link”.
   We restart training the next child exactly the same way, with the same toxic dataset.

That crashed AI model is our child.

That crashed AI model is the newly-wed couple drowning in debt.

That crashed AI model is the parent who sacrificed everything for “society’s definition of success” and now sees no way out.

If we trained a real AI like this, the entire tech community would call it criminal negligence and unethical optimisation.Yet we are doing exactly that to human beings — the most advanced “models” on the planet.The Wake-Up Question If tomorrow OpenAI or Google trained Grok or Gemini with this kind of toxic data, brutal punishment for small errors, and a 60-year-old loss function … we would boycott them, call it abusive AI, demand jail for the engineers.So why do we keep doing it to our own flesh and blood? India is racing to become an AI superpower, but we are training our humans with the worst possible algorithm.It’s time to garbage-collect the old societal code and write a new one — one that optimises for joy, resilience, creativity, and genuine contribution instead of ranks, EMIs, and log kya kahenge. Only then will both our children and our AI truly thrive.Pathways to Awakening: Innovate, Don't ImitateIndia can pivot. Start with mindset: Ditch toppers' worship for innovators' spark. Less rote, more critical thinking, creativity, and multidisciplinary joy. Roll out Innovation Labs nationwide: hands-on tools like robotics and 3D printing to spark problem-solving, not just scores. Regulate schools: Cap fees, mandate transparency, tie hikes to outcomes—not hype. Fund public gems to rival privates, easing the "international" obsession. Normalize multilingual, skill-first learning: coding, empathy, entrepreneurship over endless exams. For marriages, destigmatize love over ledger: counseling hubs, debt-free wedding norms. Broaden "success"—scholarships for creators, not just rankers. Mental health? Embed it in schools, workplaces. Parents, lead: Value your child's spark over society's script. By 2047, India needs thinkers, not test-takers.A Call to Real: Choose Satisfaction Over SpectacleIndia's suicide surge isn't inevitable—it's a symptom of illusions we built. Students dying for degrees, parents for pride, couples for customs: enough. Live satisfactorily, not societally. Wake up to innovators' mindsets—curious, resilient, bold. Our kids carry our perspectives, twisted with theirs; let's gift them freedom, not fetters. As one voice on X urges, normalize emotions, dialogue, strength in vulnerability. Parents, schools, leaders: rethink. For a future where lives thrive, not just survive. The illusion ends when we choose real. Who's ready to rewrite the script?