Fired tech workers turn to chatbots for counselling

Indians, like people the world over, tend to hide their mental anguish for fear of being stigmatised

For months Lovkesh Joshi was quietly terrified of losing his job as a manager at a top Indian tech services company. Clients were cutting their budgets, prompting his bosses to fire dozens of colleagues. His manager told him not to worry, but it was hard not to when experts were predicting that millions of the country’s IT workers would be eliminated in the coming years. “My head was full of ‘yaar, kya honewalla hai?,'” says Joshi, using a Hindi expression that means “what’s going to happen?”

Joshi didn’t want to burden his wife or friends so he turned to a