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Aamir Khan gives schools a class on inclusion and emotional safety
MUMBAI: “Real learning only happens when a child feels safe emotionally and mentally.” That was Aamir Khan, not in a film, but in real life, as he joined educationist Ganesh Kohli for a deeply personal and urgent conversation on mental health and inclusion in schools. In a session titled “Education and Counselling for Inclusion”, streamed live to educators and students around the globe, Khan opened up about his upcoming film Sitaare Zameen Par, his own family’s experiences with neurodiversity, and the often overlooked need for emotional scaffolding in academic spaces.
Organised by the IC3 Movement, the session wasn’t just talk, it mirrored a broader call for change. India, where over 13,000 students die by suicide annually, faces a staggering crisis. IC3’s report, Student Suicides: An Epidemic Sweeping India, reveals that this rate is doubling faster than general suicide rates, demanding not just awareness, but action.
Khan, known for Taare Zameen Par and 3 Idiots, didn’t hold back. “We speak of excellence,” he said, “but we forget, it’s impossible without emotional safety.” His words resonated against findings from IC3’s 2024 Annual Student Quest Report, which surveyed students and counsellors across 56 countries. 81 per cent of students and 83 per cent of counsellors said that connecting personal values like passion and purpose with career choices improves mental well-being and clarity.
IC3 Founder Ganesh Kohli stressed that inclusion must go beyond good intentions. “It requires transforming mindsets, policies, and day-to-day interactions,” he said. “Inclusion is about ensuring every student belongs.”
The session spotlighted some urgent themes: stigma around mental health, the shortage of trained school counsellors, and the need for emotionally intelligent educators. “Teachers should be the highest paid professionals in any society,” said Khan, reiterating how one bad teacher can damage generations, and one good one can change lives.
This dialogue sets the tone for the upcoming 2025 Annual IC3 Conference & Expo (August 20–21, Jio World Convention Centre, Mumbai), themed “Counseling as a Culture”. It will bring together educators and policymakers from 95 plus countries, and focus on weaving career and college counselling into the fabric of every school where well-being matters just as much as test scores.
As anxiety, burnout, and academic pressure hit alarming levels, conversations like these are no longer optional. They’re a syllabus in themselves. And in Aamir Khan’s words, perhaps it’s time schools stop chasing marks, and start listening to what truly makes a child thrive.
NATIONAL: Amazon Ads has laid out a sharply tech-led vision for the advertising industry in 2026, arguing that artificial intelligence, streaming TV and creator partnerships will combine to turn brand building into a more precise, performance-driven business.
At the heart of the shift, the company says, is the fusion of AI with Amazon’s vast trove of shopping, browsing and streaming signals, allowing advertisers to move beyond blunt reach metrics to campaigns designed around real customer behaviour.
“The future of advertising is not about reaching more people, but the right people with messages that resonate,” said Amazon Ads India head and vice president Girish Prabhu. “By combining AI with deep customer insights, we help brands move from broadcasting campaigns to having meaningful conversations wherever audiences spend their time.”
One of the biggest changes, according to Amazon Ads, will be the collapse of the wall between media planning and creative development. Retail media, powered by first-party data, is increasingly shaping everything from brand discovery to final purchase, pushing marketers to design campaigns around audience insight rather than internal instinct.
AI is also moving from a support tool to a creative engine. Agentic AI, which automates and accelerates production, is expected to make high-quality creative accessible even to small businesses, compressing weeks of work into hours and giving challengers the ability to compete with larger brands on speed and scale.
Behind the scenes, AI-driven analytics will take on a bigger role in campaign optimisation, identifying patterns, spotting opportunities and recommending actions that would previously have required teams of analysts.
Streaming TV is another big battleground. With India’s video streaming audience now above 600 million and connected TV users at 129.2 million in 2025, advertisers are set to treat streaming not just as a branding channel but as a performance engine, measured increasingly by sales, sign-ups and bookings rather than just reach.
Finally, Amazon Ads sees creators and contextual advertising reshaping how brands tell stories. Creators will act less like influencers and more like long-term partners, while scene-aware ads on streaming platforms will allow brands to insert hyper-relevant offers into the flow of what viewers are watching.
Taken together, Amazon Ads argues, these shifts mark a move towards advertising that is both more human and more measurable, where AI handles the complexity, and creativity does the persuading.
