Author: Anish Desai
For many Indians, the arrival of the monsoon is inseparable from food. The first showers bring an irresistible craving for hot pakoras, samosas, bhajiyas and cups of steaming masala chai. Families head outdoors, children play in the rain, and roadside vendors do brisk business selling cut fruits, fresh juices and popular snacks. Yet, this is also the season when doctors begin seeing a surge in patients complaining of stomach ailments. Cases of food poisoning, diarrhoea, viral gastroenteritis, acidity and dehydration rise sharply. Quite often, the culprit is not overeating or unhealthy food alone. Even foods generally regarded as wholesome can…
The first rains had finally arrived. Like millions across India, Rohan stepped onto his balcony with a cup of tea, breathing in the unmistakable scent of wet earth. The oppressive summer heat had disappeared overnight. Roads glistened, children splashed through puddles, and the city seemed to come alive once again. A week later, however, the relief had given way to an unexpected problem. What began as mild itching between his toes soon spread to his groin. His wife developed a stubborn rash beneath her breasts, while his teenage daughter complained of worsening acne despite following her usual skincare routine. A…
It is the first week of July in Mumbai. After two days of relentless rain, 42-year-old Rajesh, a taxi driver, develops a high-grade fever, severe body aches and a headache. Assuming it is “just a viral fever”, he buys over-the-counter medicines from a neighbourhood pharmacy and continues working. Three days later, his fever worsens. His platelet count has fallen dramatically. He is admitted to the hospital with severe dengue. Across the city, eight-year-old Ayesha develops profuse diarrhoea after drinking contaminated water in her housing colony following flooding. In Kerala, a farmer who spent hours wading through floodwater develops fever, jaundice…
A seven-year-old child in Lucknow develops a fever. His parents visit the neighbourhood pharmacy and purchase a three-day course of antibiotics without consulting a doctor. The fever subsides briefly, only to return a week later. This time, the child is admitted to a hospital with severe pneumonia. Laboratory tests reveal a resistant bacterial infection. The antibiotic that would once have cured him no longer works. This is no longer an isolated story. It is becoming a defining challenge for India’s healthcare system. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), particularly antibiotic resistance, has emerged as one of the greatest public health threats of the…
On a scorching afternoon in Vidarbha, 42-year-old Rajesh was making his final delivery of the day. The temperature had crossed 45°C. Like thousands of delivery workers across India, he ignored his headache and dizziness, believing them to be signs of ordinary fatigue. Two hours later, he collapsed unconscious. Doctors diagnosed him with severe heatstroke. In Mumbai, 68-year-old Meena Devi never stepped outdoors. Yet after spending an entire day in a poorly ventilated apartment during a heatwave, she arrived at the emergency department confused and severely dehydrated. Meanwhile, Rohan, a fit 19-year-old college cricketer, spent an entire weekend playing under the…
Every morning, millions of people begin their day with a ritual that has become almost automatic: a handful of supplements swallowed with hurried sips of water before rushing to work. Vitamin D for immunity. Magnesium for sleep. Iron for energy. Protein for muscle. Omega-3 for the heart. The wellness industry has trained people to ask one central question: What supplement should I take? But nutrition scientists are increasingly focusing on another question that may be just as important: When should I take it? Because in the human body, timing is not a minor detail. It can change how effectively a…
In a remote village in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district, an elderly diabetic farmer once spent nearly an entire day travelling 18 kilometres for a routine medical consultation, only to discover that the doctor at the government facility was unavailable. Today, he walks to a small digital kiosk installed near the village centre, where a health worker checks his blood sugar, blood pressure and ECG before connecting him to a doctor through video consultation. Within minutes, he leaves with a prescription and follow-up advice. Scenes like this are beginning to redefine healthcare access across rural India. From Uttar Pradesh to Karnataka, from…
A 27-year-old software engineer in Mumbai begins his day late, the residue of another night of poor sleep. Breakfast is skipped. Work unfolds on a screen. Meals arrive via apps. Physical activity is negligible. He considers himself “too young” to worry about health—until a routine check-up flags high blood pressure and borderline diabetes. This is no longer an outlier. It is fast becoming the urban Indian norm. India’s disease burden has undergone a decisive shift towards non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which now account for roughly 63–65 per cent of all deaths. Nearly one in four deaths is premature—occurring before the age…
It begins with what feels ordinary. A child returns home in the peak of summer with a headache and fatigue. His mother blames the heat. An elderly neighbour develops severe dehydration after episodes of loose motions. A young office worker recovers from a fever, only to discover that it is dengue, weeks before the monsoon. These are no longer isolated summer events. They reflect a changing health reality in India. Global warming, prolonged heatwaves, erratic rainfall, urban heat islands, and water stress are amplifying common summer illnesses. Heat illness is now a silent summer emergency. Heat exhaustion and heat stroke…
For more than a century, human intelligence seemed to follow a reassuring rule: each generation grew sharper than the last. Psychologists called it the Flynn Effect, a steady rise in IQ scores observed across the 20th century. But that rule is now breaking. Multiple international researchers are documenting an unsettling shift. In several countries, Generation Z—those born roughly between 1997 and 2012—is showing declines in attention, reading comprehension, numeracy and problem-solving compared to previous generations. In some regions, IQ gains have stalled or reversed altogether. What began as an academic signal has now entered policy discourse. In January this year,…
