A minority community that has consistently contributed to the India growth story, is now leading the way in making our society more humane, more accommodating. A report in this paper stated that the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) recently launched the creation of a dedicated corpus for long-term financial and therapeutic support for fellow community members suffering from any kind of mental health problems.

This is a noble blueprint for others to follow. Mental health has been gaining attention in recent times owing to its sometimes disastrous outcomes, more so among the young. However, avenues to access affordable healthcare are woefully lacking. India has only 0.75 psychiatrists per million population, as against the World Health Organisation’s recommended three per million.

Besides, in 2025-26, India allocated only 1.97% of its annual budget on health, far lower than the 2.5% target set by the National Health Policy of 2017. As percentage of GDP, India allocates around 3%. More worrying is that it spends only 1.3% of that allocation on mental health. Advanced economies such as the OECD countries spend up to 11% of their GDP on healthcare, with a significant allocation for mental health.