From Business World of 6 June 2005.
An idle minister
makes work
There was a time
when official Indians used to get excited about unofficial Indians’ drinking.
Prohibition was one of Mahatma Gandhi’s fads; in their gratitude to the father
of the nation, the fathers of the constitution inserted prohibition in it. One
by one, lights went out of bars in state after state. With prohibition came
liquor permits, corruption, smuggling and perversion of values. A bottle of
Scotch became the most prized gift a foreign friend could bring an Indian; instead
of gold, the swift motorboats from Dubai began to bring cases of Black Label
into dark coves of Maharashtra every night. A multi-million Rupee business
developed under the benign umbrella of prohibition departments; they became the
path to riches for many a politician and official. It took thirty years to
reverse the single mistake of the venerables. Even today, Gujarat remains dry
on paper and nourishes a lucrative smuggling trade. But the rest of India has
come back to its senses despite the politicians.
This moralistic
racket started in 1999 in Goa. There Dr Sharad Vaidya started a non-government
organization called the National Organization for Tobacco Eradication, got the
ear of the local BJP politicians, and got a law passed. It banned smoking and
spitting in public places and vehicles, direct or indirect advertisement, sale
of tobacco products to those under 21 and within 100 metres of a school. In
some states of the US, the most tobaccophobic country in the world, they ban
the carrying of a gun within 500 yards of a school; but even they have not
thought of banning smoking near a school. In fact, many offices in America are
smoke-free, with the result that one sees rows of young women standing outside
them smoking on snow-covered pavements and bonding. But Goa went one better.
And then, the local BNP spread the message to the national BJP, and Sushma
Swaraj acted as the bludgeoning rod. Health ministers have little to do unless
they actually want to improve health services. For someone as little qualified
for the job as Sushma Swaraj, it was quite impossible to do anything worth
while. So in 2003, she persuaded her self-righteous colleagues and passed a law
to ban tobacco advertisements. Finally they were banned on 1 May 2004 – just
before the general elections swept Sushma Swaraj together with the rest of the
BJP out of power.
Although the
government changed, the self-righteousness did not. Anbumani Ramadoss, the UPA
health minister, has banned the showing of smoking in films and on television
from 1 August. He has set up a “high-powered committee” to look into complaints
and grievances relating to indirect advertisements”, and that a “scientific”
report is being prepared to work out under which act to ban pan masala and
gutka.
Flue-cured
Virginia tobacco, which is used in making cigarettes, accounts for less than a
quarter of the tobacco consumed in this country. All that the government’s
campaigns against tobacco achieve is to encourage the consumption of cigarettes
in forms other than cigarette smoking. According to an IMRB report, the bidi
industry employed 5.6 million people in 1994/95 – six times as many as the
cigarette industry – including 290,000 farmers, 4.5 million bidi makers and
840,000 distributors.
Consciously or
unconsciously, all the campaigners against cigarettes – the politicians who
banned the financing of sport by tobacco manufacturers, tobacco advertisements,
and now smoking on the screen – have served and continue to serve the interests
of the indigenous tobacco products industry – bidis, hookah smoking, cheroots,
gutka, pan masala etc. These products are made for and sold in local markets;
they do not need national advertising. Banning them is the easiest thing to do:
all that the government has to do is to ban the cultivation of tobacco. But the
government will never do it. The number of people dependent on their production
and distribution is so huge that the politicians will never act against them.
It is possible
that the anti-tobacco lobby is finding the government easier to influence under
a Sikh Prime Minister. But he is also an intelligent Prime Minister, capable of
working things out for himself. He should ask himself whose interests this
“anti-tobacco” lobby is serving – and whose interests his health minister, his
government, and he are serving. If he is going to service indefensible vested
interests, he should at least do so with open eyes.
