Across the world, workplaces are learning that employee well-being is not a perk but the foundation of a good work culture. India has been part of this shift. The Union Budget 2026-27 has given mental health more visibility than it has received in years. A second Nimhans in northern India. Upgraded apex status for the National Mental Health Institutes in Ranchi (Jharkhand) and Tezpur (Assam). Fifty per cent expansion in emergency and trauma care capacity at district hospitals. These are meaningful commitments to infrastructure that has long been underfunded.
Yet the Budget speech, like much of India’s policy conversation, stopped short of naming what remains invisible: addiction, substance use and recovery. Substance use disorders fall within the ambit of the Mental Healthcare Act 2017. The strengthened infrastructure can, in principle, serve people in recovery. But when the policy language stays silent, so do the systems meant to implement it.
This pattern is familiar. It mirrors what has happened at Indian workplaces over the past two decades. Corporate India has moved to embed mental health in workplace policy: counselling services, mental health days, manager training, and more. What once required courage to raise with an employer now has, in many organisations, institutional support.
That progress creates an opening. The next layer of workplace well-being is recovery. And it is waiting for the same institutional attention that mental health received.
Inside the office
The AIIMS-Ministry of Social Justice national survey, Magnitude of Substance Use in India (2019), found that 14.6% of Indians aged 10–75 are current users of alcohol—that’s about 160 million people—and 57 million people are estimated to need help for harmful or dependent alcohol use. The highest prevalence is in the 15–35 age group, which overlaps almost entirely with the working-age population.
Peer-reviewed Indian public health research suggests alcohol contributes to 15–20% of work absenteeism and up to 40% of workplace accidents. A 2019 study, Health Impact And Economic Burden Of Alcohol Consumption In India, published in the International Journal On Drug Policy, estimated the overall economic burden of alcohol consumption to be 1.45% of GDP, more than the 1.35% of GDP India was spending on public health at the time.
These figures do not stay outside office doors. They are present in corporate campuses, factories, construction sites, hotels, retail floors and family businesses.
Outside the workplace, India has created policy pathways to respond. The Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan, a national drug demand reduction campaign launched by the ministry of social justice and empowerment in August 2020, now operates across all districts. The Drug De-addiction Programme, run by the ministry of health and family welfare since 1988, has established de-addiction centres in government hospitals, though evaluations suggest its reach remains limited. Integrated Rehabilitation Centres for Addicts, which are NGO-run facilities funded by the ministry that provide inpatient treatment, counselling and rehabilitation, supported over 339,000 beneficiaries in 2022-23, according to a government press release.
Treatment works. It saves lives. People recover. The question is what happens when they return to work.
This is where the gap appears. Some Indian employers include substance-use clauses in their codes of conduct. Some offer employee assistance programmes that cover addiction counselling. But structured return-to-work pathways are rare.
There is no widely adopted framework for phased re-entry, manager guidance, confidentiality protocols, or relapse support. The mental health infrastructure that large employers spent years building has not yet extended to recovery.
The result is uncertainty. Employees do not know if disclosure is safe. HR teams navigate without a template. In that silence, many people returning from treatment stay quiet. That is not a system. It is a gap where support should be.
Closing the Gap
Closing this gap does not require new legislation or large budgets. It requires intent.
A recovery-ready workplace begins with a confidential pathway for employees to disclose and request support, one that does not route through their direct reporting line. The fear of career consequences is often the first barrier to seeking help.
A return-to-work protocol should allow for phased re-entry: adjusted hours in the initial weeks, a designated point of contact for check-ins, and clarity on expectations. The goal is not reduced accountability but conditions where someone can rebuild confidence without being set up to fail.
Manager training should be specific and practical: how to have the initial conversation without overstepping, what language to avoid, when to refer to HR or the employee assistance programme, and how to handle questions from colleagues. Managers are not expected to become counsellors. They need to know where their role ends. Training should also extend to teams. Awareness sessions can help colleagues understand what recovery involves without disclosing individual cases, set norms for respectful conduct, and reduce the casual remarks that can undermine someone’s return.
An employee assistance programme that explicitly includes ongoing recovery support, not just crisis intervention, is essential. Recovery is not a one-time event. Access to continued counselling and check-ins over six to twelve months can make a huge difference.
Finally, policy should treat relapse as a clinical event requiring support, not automatic grounds for termination. A workplace that understands this will retain employees who might otherwise be lost and build trust with others who may be struggling in silence.
None of this is complicated. What is missing is visibility: a shared understanding that recovery-friendly practices are part of good management, not an exception made for a few.
Employees who return successfully retain institutional knowledge and reduce hiring costs.
More importantly, they bring a resilience that comes from having navigated difficulty. People who seek help and do the work of recovery deserve a path back. Not through luck or the goodwill of one sympathetic manager, or through someone’s discretion, but through a system designed to support them.
India’s journey on workplace mental health shows what is possible when institutions decide to act. Recovery is the next step. The treatment infrastructure exists. The workplace well-being frameworks exist. What remains is for employers to make visible what has been handled in silence for too long: that people get better, and that getting better should not mean starting over.