Talk about a new law which you would like to bring in your country.

My vision for this law in India is — a nationwide mandated curriculum for physical and mental health (indispensable exercise & general wellbeing including sex education) from Class 1 to Class 12 as a part of national school curriculum, but not an add-on program at the discretion of individual schools.

Each school would have to include, by law, at least an hour of organized physical activity each day — including not just curriculum-based PE but also choice in play and recreation time — plus designated entire weeks for emotional literacy writing, stress management skills, healthy relationship skills and mental health awareness appropriate to the developmental age.

The changes resulting from such legislation would be meaningful both in the short and long term. In the short term, it could also fix one of most important health problems faced by today Indian youth, as continuously highlighted in research – the severe epidemic of physical inactivity and soaring anxiety and depression rates among school-aged children. Health researchers have shown that over generations a population that is both physically tough and emotionally literate produces corresponding gains in health, productivity, social cohesion and demand on what is presently entirely underserved mental health services.

Best explained as the synthesis of my own experience — this way back in school seeing friends and contemporaries crumble at pressure points with few tools to help them cope — and recent research I read on the association between physical activity, mental health about the role of physical activity (and improved emotional literacy) and academic performance (hint: more movement + better understandings = better learning outcomes for children), I began discussing such an idea.

I’m serious about this legislation. It would inevitably face resistance from academic-pressure advocates who see physical and mental-health education as doing a disservice to exam preparation — utterly missing the evidence that the two are complementary rather than competing, with multi-fold returns on investment in better resourced and more skilled generations ready to thrive across all domains of life.