Although I disagree as well (Indian youth has a much larger absolute, existential pressure to succeed than the UK youth has), however, mentally people tend to move to their frame of reference. People in most of the EU, if they fail in college they won’t die but many do feel immense and comparable pressure. You can tell them people in India are far worse off so count your blessings, like telling ‘Eat your sprouts, children in Africa are dying’, but that cannot really sway a young, stressed mindset. Anecdotal but a family member committed suicide because of this very pressure in an EU country with all the safety nets; he could not do as well as his friends in uni and the pressure got to him.

The answer is a bit nuanced and I am suggesting that it is the case, perhaps about the same instead of being exactly the same. You can argue that the apparent cost of not studying hard in is wildly different in these two countries (basic welfare support vs complete lack thereof). Yes, I agree that when you look at providing for basic material comforts in dire circumstances it obvious which country a person ought to choose, when presented with this hypothetical choice.

But that simply fails to capture the stresses of everyday life. The average person on welfare checks can hardly be assumed to happy and is probably facing intense, if subtle, negative societal feedback for the choices he is forced to make. Do you think this person is happy to eat at McDonalds and wear cheap clothes when everyone around him is upgrading their smartphones. That's why I say that providing for basic material comforts hardly does much to improve the mental well-being. The pressure to succeed is present everywhere, and failing to do so is stressful in all such circumstances, and I would imagine that it would be roughly the same.

Again this is an article on suicides and it is the most extreme form of pressure that anyone can face. The extent to which we can compare the stress on people that aren't doing well (by societal norms) is hard to pin down exactly, and I don't want to make any bold claims there that the stresses must be exactly the same. But I do see that there is a basic similarity here.

> Are you suggesting the pressure to succeed in the UK, where there exists a fairly comprehensive safety net in the form of welfare handouts, is the same as the pressure to succeed in India

I think pressure and poverty are not as highly coupled as you suggest.

Many of the students in this article who are committing suicide come from well off families.

On the other hand the majority of Indians are not facing such high levels of pressure despite facing far higher levels of poverty.

Yes. People aren’t motivated by economic statistics.

Everyone wants to do well relative to their peers. Talk to suburban high school seniors and they’ll rank themselves from the Ivy League to the people who settled for Duke, down to the future townies getting a job or girls who got knocked up.

From my observation, kids with certain strong cultural affiliations have the added pressure of family. It’s tough to be an American born Chinese kid whose extended family assumes you are a lazy loaf who has it easy — they are under intense pressure to succeed.