Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has called for stress management lessons and practicing divinity to develop inner resilience, following the death of a young Chartered Accountant employed with Ernst & Young India.

What Happened: Sitharaman, while addressing an event at a private medical college in Chennai, said that colleges and universities must offer stress management lessons to students. One should have the inner strength to handle work pressure, and this can be achieved only through divinity, the finance minister insisted.

“Believe in God, we need to have God’s grace. Seek God, learn good discipline. Your Atma shakthi will grow only from this. The inner strength will come only with growing Atma shakti,” Sitharaman said.

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Last week, the death of 26-year-old Anna Sebastian Perayil made headlines, who due to multiple issues, including mounting work pressure. Perayil completed her CA exams in 2023 and had been employed at EY’s Pune office for only four months before passing away in July.

In a letter to EY India chairman Rajiv Memani, Perayil’s mother stated that her daughter’s death was a result of an excessive workload that exhausted her “physically, emotionally, and mentally.”

Several X users have expressed their shock at Sitharaman’s comments, calling them “insensitive” and “bizarre”. One user said the union minister’s comments “dismisses the broader issue of toxic work culture in India.” Another user describer her statement as “insensitive, despicable and outrageous”.

Congress‘ KC Venugopal has also called out the union minister for her comments on the issue. He blamed the government of only empathising with the corporate bigwigs and ignoring the working class.

“It is downright cruel on part of the Finance Minister to blame Anna and her family for suggesting that she should have learnt stress management at home. This kind of victim blaming is despicable and no words can convey the anger and disgust one feels because of such statements,” Venugopal said in a post on X.

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