November 14th! When I was a young school goer in India this was a day we kids looked forward to all year long, because in India November 14th is celebrated every year as Childrens’ Day to mark the occasion of the birthday of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, and one who genuinely loved children very much.

It used to be a day of much enjoyment for all of us children in school - no school uniforms, reduced tuition classes and an evening of entertainment programs (performed by the teachers!) with a grand dinner to end it all! No wonder we eagerly awaited Childrens’ Day.

Currently in India on a holiday trip, I eagerly opened the Times of India today to see what fun activities were planned around the country to celebrate this fun day for kids. But imagine my shock when I was confronted with headlines like “2 in every 1000 children in India have Diabetes” and “1 in every 4 diabetics worldwide is an Indian”.

World Diabetes DayYes - today is not only Childrens’ day in India but it is also “World Diabetes Day“. Diabetes mellitus the debilitating disease that prevents people from properly processing blood sugar is today a focus of health organizations worldwide. In India, particularly, the high consumption of refined carbohydrates and sweets gives it the highly unenviable position of number one in worldwide diabetic cases.

This brought back to mind the stunning New York Times article I bookmarked just a couple of months ago: “Modern Ways Open India’s Doors to Diabetes” is today’s must-read article for Indians everyone, everywhere.

“Diabetes unfortunately is the price you pay for progress,” said Dr. A. Ramachandran, the managing director of the M.V. Hospital for Diabetes, in Chennai (formerly Madras).

For decades, Type 2 diabetes has been the “rich man’s burden,” a problem for industrialized countries to solve. But as the sugar disease, as it is often called, has penetrated the United States and other developed nations, it has also trespassed deep into the far more populous developing world.

…

… there is another way to see India: through its newfound excesses and expanding middle and upper classes. In a changing India, it seems to go this way: make good money and get cars, get houses, get servants, get meals out, get diabetes.

In perverse fashion, obesity and diabetes stand almost as joint totems of success.

The only good thing about Type 2 Diabetes (adult onset type)? It can almost always be prevented with a mixture of a healthful diet and regular exercise. Not the diets you go on at the end of the year to get rid of the holiday season “excess baggage”. Not the exercise you do in January alone each year as part of your “new year resolutions”.

No, I mean the healthful diet and regular exercise that should be a way of your life.

Let us resolve today to change ourselves for the better (if we haven’t already), and, more importantly, to educate our love ones about the dangers an unhealthy lifestyle can bring with it.

Let us resolve to conquer diabetes.

Only then, maybe years from now, the only thing November 14th will bring to mind is Childrens’ Day.

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