Emotional intelligence: The missing link in India’s education system: For generations, India has debated women’s empowerment, safety, equality, and justice. Laws have changed. Policies have expanded. Public awareness has grown. Yet one question remains unresolved: why do so many women continue to suffer emotional distress, harassment, and violence inside the institution expected to offer care and security.
Many battles that shape women’s well-being are fought not in public spaces but inside homes. Recent tragedies, from Bhopal to Greater Noida, and from young brides in Karnataka to students battling emotional distress in educational institutions, point to a crisis that is no longer private. Dowry harassment, psychological abuse, coercive relationships, toxic marital conflict, and emotional neglect have become matters of public concern.
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The case of Bengaluru tech professional Atul Subhash also reminds us that emotional suffering within families is not confined to one gender. The point is not to flatten the reality of gendered violence. It is to recognise that India is facing a deeper behavioural crisis. Homes are carrying emotional burdens that law, education, and social policy have not yet addressed adequately.
Emotional intelligence and India’s social crisis
India has invested heavily in technical education, professional training, and employability. It has not invested enough in emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, communication, empathy, and mental well-being.
A highly educated person is not necessarily an emotionally mature one. Many young people enter marriage with degrees, jobs, and ambitions, but little preparation for the emotional demands of relationships. They are unprepared for joint family pressures, financial stress, caregiving duties, conflict, disappointment, or the slow labour of coexistence.
Where emotional regulation is weak, disagreement can quickly turn into humiliation, manipulation, silent treatment, coercion, or psychological abuse. Such behaviour is often normalised. Families describe it as adjustment. Society treats it as a domestic matter. Victims are told to endure. Perpetrators are rarely taught to reflect.
The cost is not merely personal. Emotional distress inside homes affects productivity, women’s labour force participation, children’s development, healthcare spending, and social stability. A country’s human capital is shaped not only in classrooms and workplaces. It is also shaped at dining tables, in bedrooms, and in everyday family conversations.
Schools must teach behavioural skills
India needs structured emotional intelligence and behavioural skills education in schools and higher education. This is not a luxury. It is a social necessity.
Such education need not be ideological or adversarial. It should not be reduced to lectures on morality. It should teach young people how to understand emotions, manage anger, resolve conflict, listen with respect, set boundaries, recognise coercive behaviour, and seek help before distress turns destructive.
The objective is not to divide people into “good” and “bad” categories. Harmful behaviour often emerges from unresolved suffering, insecurity, learned conduct, and generational conditioning. None of this excuses abuse. But it does show why punishment alone cannot repair society. Cycles of emotional harm are broken through awareness, reflection, and competence.
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Schools already teach children how to compete. They must also teach them how to coexist. Colleges prepare young people for careers. They must also prepare them for relationships, responsibility, and emotional adulthood.
India does not need to invent this agenda from scratch. NEP 2020 already recognises socio-emotional capacities as part of holistic education, while NCERT and the School Health Programme under Ayushman Bharat have developed material on emotional well-being and mental health. The gap lies in implementation. Emotional intelligence must move from policy language to classrooms through trained teachers, counsellors, age-appropriate modules, peer-support systems, and referral pathways for serious distress. Without this architecture, the subject will remain another well-meaning slogan.
AI age needs human skills
The case for emotional intelligence has become stronger in the age of artificial intelligence. As AI reshapes workplaces, technical skills will remain important. But they will not be enough. Information, speed, and efficiency are becoming easier to automate. Empathy, restraint, compassion, emotional resilience, and ethical judgment remain deeply human.
India’s education system has increasingly privileged technical competence. In the process, it has neglected emotional and relational wisdom. This is ironic for a civilisation that has long engaged with questions of duty, ethics, restraint, relationships, and social harmony.
Reintegrating these dimensions into contemporary education may be among India’s most important social reforms. It would strengthen families. It would improve mental well-being. It would reduce everyday cruelty. It would help create citizens who are not only employable but emotionally responsible.
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Emotional empowerment matters
Women’s empowerment cannot rest only on legal rights, financial inclusion, or employment. These are essential. But they are incomplete without emotional empowerment: the ability to live with self-worth, recognise abuse, communicate needs, resist coercion, and build relationships grounded in dignity.
The same applies to men. Boys and young men must be taught that emotional distress is not weakness, control is not love, silence is not strength, and domination is not masculinity. A society that teaches people how to earn but not how to emotionally coexist leaves one of its deepest problems untouched.
India cannot progress sustainably if its homes remain emotionally fractured. Emotional intelligence, empathy, communication, and behavioural awareness must become part of education and public discourse. As young people prepare for an AI-driven economy, they must also be prepared for the harder task of becoming emotionally responsible human beings.
Dr Edith Jacob is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics, Christ University, Bangalore.