August 3, 2007
News- Smoke it out
The Union government strictly controls the cultivation of poppy, limiting it to production required for pharmaceutical use such as morphine and codeine. This is because the recreational product from poppy, heroin, is habit-forming and can wreck the mental and physical health of the addict.
It is, therefore, surprising that tobacco, whose products are equally habit-forming and internationally condemned for causing cancer, is freely cultivated in India. Tobacco receives government support in the form of research inputs to enhance farm productivity and subsidies for export. Tobacco was introduced by the Portuguese to India some 400 years ago. Today, India is among the top three producers in the world of this killer weed, turning out around 700 million kg annually from 40 million hectares.
Tobacco causes over 20 categories of fatal and disabling diseases, especially cancer. Sixty-five per cent of all men and 33 per cent of all women in India use tobacco in some form. According to a report in the Indian Journal of Community Medicine, nearly half the cancer cases in India are tobacco-related. Oral cancer is a major public health problem in our country and has long been linked with the habit of chewing betel laced with tobacco.
As many as 8,00,000 Indians succumb every year to tobacco-related illnesses and most of them die before they have reached 40 years of age. WHO has projected that by 2020 tobacco will account for 13 per cent of all deaths in India.
The tax structure in India is skewed towards making tobacco products more affordable. Taxes levied on cigarettes are 30 times that imposed on bidis and chewing tobacco. Poorer people in India, particularly in rural areas, take to bidis and chewing tobacco. Bidi smokers have a 40 per cent higher risk of developing cancer than cigarette smokers. However, 38 per cent of tobacco in India is consumed as bidis, 48 per cent as chewing tobacco, and only 14 per cent as cigarettes. Considering the above, one would expect that the government would take steps to curb and eventually eliminate the cultivation of tobacco and production of tobacco products, instead of imposing cosmetic restrictions like banning the depiction of smoking in movies or depicting skull and crossbones on cigarette packs.
The government is not interested in striking at the roots of the tobacco menace because of vote-bank politics. The tobacco industry employs nearly 35 million people in the country including six million farmers, 20 million farm workers, 4.4 million bidi-making workers, 2.2 million tribals engaged in gathering tendu leaves (which go into bidi covers) and two million traders/retailers. The government can, perhaps, forgo the Rs 6,000 crore annual tax revenue from tobacco products but it would be hard put to withstand the wrath of the millions thrown out of work in case cultivation of tobacco is banned.
What about alternatives to tobacco for farmers? According to the findings of the Central Tobacco Research Institute, there are virtually no crops that match tobacco's levels of remuneration in relevant regions. In southern Andhra Pradesh, chillies come a poor second. In Karnataka, Gujarat, Bihar and West Bengal, cotton, pearl millet, maize and potato, respectively, are nowhere near tobacco in terms of earnings. Does this imply that we will have to live with the menace of tobacco and sacrifice a million or so lives a year so that 35 million can eke out a living? Not if tobacco farmers are made to take up alternative crops and the government makes up part of the difference in earnings through a subsidy.
As for bidi rollers, perhaps they can be trained to make other products from tendu leaves, such as plates and cups which can be environmentally superior alternatives to plastic products. Large consumers like the Railways, defence forces, marriage contractors can be induced to purchase these products in bulk from bidi-roller cooperatives. This will also keep intact the tendu-gathering income of tribals. All this will cost governments in the Centre and states far less than the price of medical treatment of tobacco victims
online available at - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Editorial/Smoke_it_out/articleshow/2251745.cms
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