BHARAT: A New Blueprint for Healthy Ageing in India
In recent years, life expectancy has improved across the globe, including in India. However, living longer does not always mean living healthier. With increasing cases of age-related diseases like Parkinson’s and dementia, there is a growing need to understand how Indians age — not just in terms of years, but in terms of health and well-being.
To address this gap, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, launched a groundbreaking research project in 2023 called BHARAT — short for Biomarkers of Healthy Aging, Resilience, Adversity, and Transitions. This study is part of the larger Longevity India Program.
Most of the medical and diagnostic standards used today are based on data collected from Western populations. This means that health benchmarks like cholesterol levels, vitamin D, or inflammatory markers may not truly reflect what is normal or healthy for Indians. For example, many Indians are labelled as “deficient” in vitamin B12 or D even when they may not actually suffer from related health issues.
When Western biomarkers are used as a universal standard, they can lead to:
Misdiagnosis
Inappropriate treatments
Delayed identification of actual health risks in Indian individuals
This is especially dangerous when it comes to age-related illnesses that progress gradually and are difficult to treat in later stages.
The BHARAT study aims to build a large, national database of what “normal health” looks like for the Indian population. This baseline will be used to:
Understand the biological signs of healthy ageing
Recognize early signs of diseases
Develop customized healthcare interventions for Indians
The goal is to ensure that India has its own scientific reference framework — the Bharat Baseline — just like countries in the West have.
The BHARAT study is collecting a wide range of biological and environmental information, including:
All this information will help scientists understand how Indians age — and why some people age more healthily than others.
Because the BHARAT study is dealing with massive and complex datasets, it uses AI and machine learning tools to:
Combine and analyze different types of health data
Detect patterns that may not be visible to human researchers
Simulate possible outcomes of medical interventions before clinical trials
Predict organ-level ageing even before disease symptoms appear
This high-tech approach helps scientists identify proactive markers of health — not just disease markers.
India is a genetically and culturally diverse country. To build a meaningful baseline, the study needs to collect samples from people of different regions, ages, diets, and lifestyles. Finding healthy volunteers, especially older adults, is one of the biggest challenges.
A study of this scale requires sustained government and philanthropic funding. Researchers also need help from health institutions, local communities, and even policy-makers to reach people across the country.
AI tools must be trained using Indian-specific data. Otherwise, they risk repeating global biases that ignore local realities. BHARAT researchers are aware of this and are working to ensure their models reflect India’s unique health environment.
The BHARAT study aims to shift the focus of Indian healthcare from simply treating diseases to predicting and preventing them. By identifying signs of organ ageing before any symptoms appear, doctors can:
With the insights from BHARAT, India can begin to develop personalized treatment protocols, nutrition plans, and even public health policies tailored to the Indian body and environment — rather than relying on one-size-fits-all global standards.
Kargil Vijay Diwas is celebrated every year on July 26 to honor the brave soldiers…
There are over 195 countries in the world, and many of them have names that…
In many countries around the world, the number of women is either equal to or…
Shashi Tharoor is a well-known Indian politician, writer, public speaker and former diplomat. Born on…
The Skill India Mission, launched on 15th July 2015, marked a pivotal step toward equipping…
NASA has launched the TRACERS mission (Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites) to better…