BRICS Sustainable Lifestyle Week opens with 97th Fit India cycle ride

BRICS Sustainable Lifestyle Week, a seven-day campaign held from November 1 to 7, 2026 as part of India's BRICS Presidency, opened on Sunday, November 1 with the 97th edition of Fit India Sundays on Cycle. Around 1,000 people rode at Talkatora Stadium in New Delhi under the theme "One Week, Seven Actions, One Planet", with linked rides held at other locations across the country. The ride also marked Rashtriya Ekta Diwas, observed on October 31 for the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

Most lifestyle campaigns ask people to change one habit at a time. This week bundles personal health and the environment into a single list of seven everyday actions, from cycling and yoga to switching off unused lights and refusing plastic bags. For students and first-jobbers, that framing is useful: the choices that keep the body healthy, such as walking or cycling short distances, eating seasonal and local food and cutting back on packaged snacks, often also lower energy use and waste.

Mission LiFE, the umbrella for the week, was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in November 2021. Its idea is that individual and community behaviour, repeated by millions, can add up to measurable change. Linking it to India's BRICS Presidency in 2026 takes the same message to a group of large emerging economies, where rapidly growing young populations will shape consumption for decades.

The Sundays on Cycle series shows how such campaigns try to become routine rather than one-off events. A weekly ride gives young people a fixed, free reason to be active on a Sunday morning. Previous editions have been paired with messages on drug abuse and online fraud; this one carried the drug-free pledge again alongside the climate theme. The organisers' reported reach of nearly 37 lakh participants in under two years suggests the format has caught on, though the figure counts attendances, not unique riders.

State-level events show the week reaching beyond Delhi. In Andhra Pradesh, schools have been given a day-by-day programme for the week, and in Visakhapatnam officials used it to urge residents to make eco-friendly habits part of daily life. In Manipur, the week was inaugurated in Imphal with a cyclothon.

What should a young reader do next? Check the MY Bharat portal for registered events near you, join a Sunday ride or walk, and try one of the seven actions each day this week of the week, such as carrying your own water bottle instead of buying plastic ones.

Short-term: Schools, colleges, NCC and NSS units and youth volunteers are expected to run pledges, rides, walks and awareness activities through November 7, with the food-systems day on November 4 focusing on millets.

Long-term: If weekly fitness rides and LiFE actions become habits, they could help reduce lifestyle diseases among young Indians and cut household waste and energy use, which is the stated aim of Mission LiFE.

Who is affected: Students, young volunteers registered on MY Bharat, NCC cadets and NSS members, schools taking part in the week, and cycling and fitness groups in cities and towns.

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