Why India needs to get serious about its battle of the bulge

A growing obesity crisis will make it more difficult for the country to achieve its big power ambitions.

Joyeeta Pramanik along with her family at their home in Kolkata. She is among the estimated 82.5 million Indians battling obesity. ST PHOTO: DEBARSHI DASGUPTA
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KOLKATA - Joyeeta Pramanik is like any other urban teenager hooked on the Internet, spending four hours daily online, scrolling through her feed of funny memes and dog videos.

But every evening for an hour, the 15-year-old in Kolkata, the capital of India’s West Bengal state, puts her screen to different use – a calorie-busting online workout programme to shed some weight.

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