India: Ashes to Ashes is Selective

Source from:  New Indian Express 12/01/2014

Adolf Hitler hated smoking and would not allow anyone to light up in his presence. In Tsarist Russia, smokers risked their noses being cut off. The Ottoman Sultan Murad IV executed smokers. In Indonesia, there is a fatwa against smoking. No personal habit has faced so many diktats as smoking. The government's proposed ban on selling loose cigarettes has smokers fuming. India has 120 million smokers, of which 30 per cent of men love the butt. The number of Indian female smokers has more than doubled, from about 5.3 million to 12.2 million between 1980 and 2012 while surprisingly men are inhaling less. By 2020, over 1.20 million Indians would die from tobacco-related causes.

Ironically, global awareness about tobacco's impact on health wasn't available until the 1950s. Doctors recommended smoking as healthy and tobacco companies used medical approval to sell cigarettes. A Philip Morris ad even showed a doctor prescribing cigarettes, with the strapline "For your patients with sore throats and cough, Phillip Morris cigarettes". This is despite the fact that in 1930, researchers proved that smoking caused cancer and non-smokers lived longer than smokers, and the media featured articles on tobacco's carcinogenic correlation.

Sustained anti-smoking campaigns and government bans seem to be working, but selectively. Chhattisgarh has banned chewable tobacco. The debate on smoking as a health hazard has already been won. However, it continues on whether cigarette makers are soft targets to be easily attacked because anti-smoking is politically and morally correct in an increasingly health-conscious urban India. Herein lies the rub. The politically powerful beedi industry remains outside the purview of such legislation; even though there are five beedi smokers for each cigarette smoker. India has 100 million of them, and 750 billion to 1.2 trillion beedis are made every year. Studies show that of the 10 lakh tobacco-related deaths in India, six lakh are beedi smokers.

The government action to restrict cigarettes, however laudable, is discriminating. Cigarettes being ostracised as beedis escape government wrath is an example of India vs Bharat. The tobacco war is selectively about what is considered essential and non-essential, acceptable and taboo. Energy is an essential need that even won the UPA elections in 2009. A conservation study found that in 2011-12, coal plant emissions resulted in 115,000 premature deaths and more than 20 million asthma cases. The indirect effects were heart attacks, hospital admissions and lost workdays with a health cost impact of '23,000 crore. In rural India, biomass burning releases 50 per cent of toxic gases. A Centre for Science and Environment's (CSE) analysis revealed that air pollution causes over six lakh premature deaths in India annually (3,000 children in Delhi alone) and costs the country over $80 billion in healthcare. With the number of vehicles in India set to reach 450 million by 2030, an international transportation study notes that vehicular emission causes 40,000 premature deaths in Indian metros yearly. Little is done to control industrial pollution, which is a greater health hazard. Discharged industrial effluents and untreated sewage are choking our rivers, poisoning groundwater and spreading water-borne diseases.

In this poisonous scenario, the health police has to look beyond the ashtray to address the myriad forms of death that go beyond toxic political choices. Enditem