'Drinking, smoking making Delhi kids obese'

Drinking and smoking could be contributing factors to obesity and hypertension among children in Delhi, a new government study has found, report Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Nov 3, 2008, 24:22:34 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Drinking and smoking could be contributing factors to obesity and hypertension among children in Delhi, a new government study has found.

The National Institute for Public Cooperation and Child Development (NIPCCD) found that about 30 per cent boys and about 26 per cent girls in Delhi schools consume liquor regularly. The study dealt with the age group of five years to 18 years.

Over 60 per cent of the frequent child drinkers were found to be obese and also had hypertension.

Analysis of different studies on health of over 15,000 school children in the last three years brought this fact to fore. These children confessed to drinking — some of them in huge quantity — but did not disclose where they had consumed liquor.

“That was not the specific question asked because the study was related to health of adolescents,” said a NIPCCD official.

The reason for taking up drinking, according to what the children said during the study, was its easy availability and peer pressure.

“Some children also confessed that seeing elders drink at home induced them into taking up drinking,” said the report released recently.

While most children said they drank liquor once in the last six months, others said they drank more frequently. “Drinking was one of the causes for obesity. These children were also found to be consuming a lot of junk food leading to health problems,” said the report.

About 16.5 per cent children in Delhi schools were found to be obese with the percentage on the higher side in affluent schools than in government schools.

Drinking also led to poor academic performance, said the report. The analysis also said about 3.6 per cent boys and 1.3 per cent girls, studying in class IX to XII, also confessed to smoking regularly.

Sanjay Gupta of Chetna, an NGO working with children, said drug-abuse among children was increasing in Delhi because of easy availability. “You can get drugs from a roadside vendor in Delhi. Teenagers easily get cigarettes and liquor though it is illegal,” he said.

In Delhi, the legal age for drinking is 25 years whereas in states like Goa and Karnataka the drinking age is 21.
S.L. Jain, chairperson of the National Progressive School's Conference, termed it a social problem rather than an educational problem.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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