Indian women want to stay single, don’t want kids: Karnataka minister
'Unfortunately, today we are going in a western way. We don’t want our parents to live with us, forget about grandparents being with us,' the minister said
Modern Indian women want to stay single, are unwilling to have babies after marriage, and desire children by surrogacy, according to the health minister of Karnataka.
At an event to mark World Mental Health Day at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurological Sciences, or Nimhans, Dr K Sudhakar lamented “western influence” on Indian society and said people are not willing to let their parents live with them.
“Today, I am sorry to say this, lots of modern women in India want to stay single. Even if they get married, they don’t want to give birth. They want surrogacy. So there is a paradigm shift in our thinking, which is not good,” he said.
“Unfortunately, today we are going in a western way. We don’t want our parents to live with us, forget about grandparents being with us,” the minister said.
Speaking about mental health in India, Sudhakar said every seventh Indian has some kind of mental issue, which could be mild, moderate and severe.
“Stress management is an art. This art we need not learn as Indians. We need to preach to the world how to handle stress, because yoga, meditation and pranayama are the wonderful tools which our ancestors had taught the world thousands of years back,” he said.
About COVID-19 and mental health, Sudhakar said: “The pandemic made the government start counselling patients. Till date we have counselled 24 lakh COVID-19 patients in Karnataka. I don’t know any other state that has done this.”
He said Nimhans was counselling people from its digital platform and was offering tele-medicine.
