Author: Anish Desai

At 6.30 am in a Mumbai apartment, five-year-old Aarav wakes up crying. His grandmother reaches instinctively, not for a hug or a lullaby, but for a smartphone. A cartoon lights up the screen. Aarav stops crying immediately, eyes fixed, fingers still. Breakfast will happen the same way. So will lunch. By the time Aarav reaches school age, screens may already feel safer than people. This is not a rare story. It is unfolding quietly in millions of Indian homes. Is this addiction, or just modern life? We hesitate to call it a disease. Everyone uses phones: parents, teachers, doctors and…

Back pain, neck pain, shoulder stiffness, and joint aches have become everyday complaints across India. What was once considered a problem of old age is now affecting people in their 20s and 30s. Doctors increasingly observe that pain is no longer an occasional symptom but a chronic condition for millions. This raises an important question: Is India facing a pain epidemic? WHY IS BODY PAIN SO WIDESPREAD IN INDIA TODAY? CAN THIS BE CALLED ‘PAIN ENDEMIC’? Low Back Pain (LBP – Low Back Pain) is the leading cause of disability worldwide. WHO-COPCORD (World Health Organization-Community Oriented Program for Control of…

Scale of the crisis India’s average annual PM2.5 levels—fine particulate matter that poses the gravest health risk—are nearly ten times higher than the World Health Organization’s safe limit. Cities across the Indo-Gangetic Plain, including Delhi, Lucknow, Patna and Kanpur, routinely record hazardous levels, especially in winter when cold air traps pollutants close to the ground. National health estimates link around one million premature deaths every year in India to outdoor air pollution. The majority are caused by heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and respiratory infections. While northern India remains the epicentre, air pollution has become a pan-India…