Why India Is Facing a Health Epidemic? - Dilip Kumar

There is a moment in our podcast with Dilip Kumar that captures something almost every Indian family is now living with.

My own father and mother are both diabetic, he said. There is a diabetes epidemic in India.

The entrepreneur and endurance athlete from Rainmatter Investments was talking about India’s health crisis. His personal opening was not incidental. It was the point.

Over 10 crore Indians are diabetic. That is the figure the interviewer cited. Dilip did not contest it. He extended it.

Everyone has a relative who is diabetic, he said.

This is the point where the abstract crisis becomes concrete. There is no household in urban India that does not have someone managing diabetes, cardiovascular risk, obesity, or one of the related lifestyle disorders. The epidemic is not statistical. It is present at every dinner table.

The Scale

Dilip’s broader estimate is worth pausing on.

According to my understanding, he said, around 50 to 60 percent of people, at any point of time, have some kind of lifestyle disorder. It could be diabetes. It could be overweight. It could be mental health. It could be PCOD. It could be PCOS.

The 50-60% figure is Dilip’s working estimate, not a formal statistic. Every year a new survey produces different data. But the pattern he is pointing to is broadly correct. India’s non-communicable disease burden has been growing for decades.

This is not new, Dilip said. This has been happening for around 50-60 years. But in the last 25 years, sedentary lifestyle has grown so much, and our lifestyle has become so carb-heavy, that the epidemic has accelerated.

The acceleration in the last 25 years matches the rise of urbanization, screen time, food delivery services, and industrial food production in India. The correlation is not accidental.

The First Cause: Carb-Dominant Diet

Dilip’s first cause is the Indian diet.

In India, every meal is carb-dominant, he said. Look at breakfast. Whether you are in the North or the South. In the South you have idli, dosa. In the North you have paratha, chapati, or bread. Comparatively, protein is very less.

The observation is worth sitting with. Almost every default Indian meal is a carb wrapped around a small amount of other things. Idli and sambar. Dosa and chutney. Paratha and pickle. Chapati and dal. In every case, the carb dominates the plate.

What protein will there be, Dilip said. Maximum you will eat an egg. So bread omelette. Or someone will eat a boiled egg. Beyond that, there is not much protein.

The protein deficit runs across the day. Breakfast is carbs. Lunch is carbs. Dinner is carbs. Snacks are carbs.

Protein powder as a category has emerged now, he said. But it is not that big an audience. If you go 100 or 150 kilometers outside a city, nobody eats protein powder.

The correction to the protein deficit exists but is limited to urban, health-aware consumers. The bulk of India still eats the traditional carb-dominant diet.

As Indians, our DNA is like this, Dilip said. Our system is like this. Carb dominant. Breakfast, lunch, dinner - all carbs heavy. Because of this, the protein quotient stays low.

The Second Cause: Nutrient Depletion In Modern Grains

Dilip’s second cause is subtler and important.

Earlier the grains that we had - the wheat, the rice - had more protein and nutrients, he said. Today the grains that are made at industrial scale - whether it is wheat, whether it is rice - have fewer nutrients.

Industrial-scale agriculture optimizes for yield, shelf life, and processing efficiency. It does not primarily optimize for nutrient density. Over decades, this shifts the nutritional content of the average grain downward.

So the difference that has come, Dilip said, whether we call it carb-heavy - India is carb-heavy, and even within that, the carbs themselves have fewer nutrients. Plus the sedentary lifestyle. Plus digital media has grown.

The compounding effect is important. If Indians ate more carbs than protein historically, they at least got more nutrients from those carbs. Today they eat the same volume of carbs but get fewer nutrients from them. The gap widens without anyone changing their behavior.

The Third Cause: The Convenience Trap

The third cause is what most people notice in their own lives.

We are scrolling more, Dilip said. We are just sitting in front of screens more. Movement is not happening.

The scroll and sit pattern is well documented. Every hour of scrolling is an hour of stillness. The screen becomes the interface for everything - work, entertainment, shopping, social interaction. The body barely moves.

Dilip then offered the specific observation that captures the shift.

Earlier you went to the shop, he said. Now the shop comes to you. Earlier you went to the shopping mall. Now the mall comes to you. Earlier you went and worked in the kitchen. Now someone else does that work.

Each of these shifts is small in isolation. Ordering groceries online instead of walking to the shop. Getting furniture delivered instead of visiting a store. Ordering food instead of cooking. None of them looks like a health decision. Each of them is one.

The small movement that was a natural part of the day, Dilip said, that too is not happening.

This is the sentence worth remembering. Modern convenience is not just about the tasks it saves. It is about the movements those tasks required. Walking to the shop was not exercise. It was baseline movement. Cooking was not a workout. It was baseline movement. Every layer of convenience that removed these tasks also removed the baseline movement.

The cumulative effect is a body that no longer moves at all outside of deliberate exercise. And most Indians do not do deliberate exercise.

Because of all this, Dilip said, definitely there is a health epidemic in our country. It is not a good position to be in.

Why This Framing Matters

Dilip’s framing is worth taking seriously for three reasons.

First, the framing is systemic rather than individual. Most health commentary in India focuses on personal choices - eat better, exercise more, sleep on time. Dilip is pointing to structural shifts that have made the healthy default harder to sustain.

Second, the framing acknowledges that Indian food traditions were not designed for the current activity level. Traditional Indian meals evolved when people worked physically demanding jobs, walked between places, and cooked at home. The carb-dominant meal made sense in that context. It does not make sense for a person who sits at a desk, scrolls on a phone, and orders delivery.

Third, the framing highlights that the epidemic is a slow shift, not a sudden crisis. The last 25 years of urbanization, digital growth, and industrial food production have changed everything about how Indians live. The health effects show up decades later.

What This Reveals

Three things from this segment will stay with me.

The scale of the epidemic. 10 crore diabetics is a number. Everyone has a relative who is diabetic is the human reality. The crisis is present in every family.

The carb-protein imbalance. Every meal in India is designed around carbs. Protein is a minor component. This has been true for centuries, but the mismatch with modern sedentary lifestyle is new.

The convenience trap. Every service that comes to your door has removed a small piece of daily movement. The cumulative effect is what we now call sedentary lifestyle disease.

The Universal Insight

The Dilip observation is not just about India. It is about what happens everywhere convenience culture takes hold.

The correlation between economic development, urbanization, and lifestyle disease is now documented across many countries. Wherever people gain access to food delivery, ride-sharing, e-commerce, and screen-based entertainment, the same pattern emerges. Diabetes rates rise. Obesity rises. Sedentary lifestyle diseases rise.

What is specific to India is the combination. A carb-dominant traditional diet plus rapid convenience adoption plus screen-based work plus limited exercise culture equals accelerated epidemic. Countries that had one or two of these factors saw slower rises. India has all four.

The Real Question For Readers

The uncomfortable question the segment raises is what your own daily movement looks like now compared to five years ago.

If you order groceries instead of walking to the shop, you have lost movement. If you order food instead of cooking, you have lost movement. If you take a car for distances you used to walk, you have lost movement. If you scroll instead of stepping outside during breaks, you have lost movement.

The individual losses are small. The aggregate is what shows up as diabetes at fifty.

The specific fixes are not the subject of this article. Dilip does not prescribe individual solutions and neither will this piece. The point is the systemic observation. Modern convenience has quietly removed the baseline movement that used to be built into daily life. The health effects are visible in the diabetes statistics. Awareness of the pattern is the first step. What each reader does with the awareness is their own decision, ideally taken with the advice of a healthcare professional who knows their specific situation.

Watch the full episode here: