Obesity usually is caused due to over-eating and lack of activity- Two reasons which seem deceptively simple to deal with from the outside. After all, everything one has to do is to eat less and exercise more! How difficult can it be? Very, as it would seem.
Many school students in India simply lack the time to actually work on and improve their health and life-style. The reason for this usually boils down to their studies, or excess of. The current educational climate we've created in our country is hyper-fixated upon the notions of "getting good marks" and "scoring well". This sort of obsession with excellence, which in our case is usually enforced by parents and teachers, usually leads to many problems on the part of the students. The time they get to do anything else is severely restricted. And since they're forced to spend major part of their time on studies (which more often than not, focuses solely on rote-memorization), they usually end up too tired to do any physical activity.
Students are usually also forced to discontinue their extra-curricular activities (in most cases, sports) too. And in many cases, exam-related stress also leads to over-eating and obesity. Pairing this up with the "coaching" culture present in India, perhaps, best shows what the actual problems we need to deal with are, when we are talking about this issue.
Of course, combat this we need to create a general awareness of this destructive culture as well as each individual should try to give more time on actually dealing their issues and living a healthier lifestyle. Only then can we be truly able to solve this disease plaguing our generation.
Abhinav Mohanty,
Class – XI (E),
DAV Public School,
Pokhariput,
Bhubaneswar