The 4.5 Kg Question: Why Are India’s Children Bending Under the Weight of Their School Bags? Asks Social Activist Sundeep Bhutoria
A file picture of Kolkata-based social and cultural activist Sundeep Bhutoria with Shri Jayant Chaudhary, Union Minister of State for Education.Kolkata (West Bengal) [India], September 4: Imagine six-year-old children, barely out of kindergarten, bent forward under a bag weighing nearly a quarter of their own body weight. This isn’t a hypothetical scenario. It is a crisis in plain sight, a reality for millions of Indian schoolchildren — and a health concern that Kolkata-based social and cultural activist Sundeep Bhutoria has now thrust into the national spotlight.This is not the first time Mr Bhutoria has pursued a matter of everyday hardship with a Union Ministry. In 2017, he first wrote to the then Minister of External Affairs, the late Sushma Swaraj, drawing attention to the hea...