Monday, April 1, 2013

The Worst Policy Excuse of all!

World No Tobacco Day on May 31 presents yet Another Occasion to bring out The Shameless Excuses by The Indian Government in allowing The Tobacco Industry to continue in its current form.

The general indifference and the often blasé attitude most of our politicians show towards tobacco use in this country, which the World Health Organisation predicts will have the fastest rate of mortality due to tobacco use in the first two decades of this century, is quite shocking. Strange it may seem but gloomy statistics against consumption of tobacco have hardly had any deterrent effect so far nor have they proved a strong motivator for the Indian government to finish off the industry, as it is in its current form.

According to various estimates, the number of tobacco users in India (10 years and above) is around 250 million, comprising urban and rural male and female. Medical research says there exists an incontrovertible proof of link between smoking and disease and the two share quite an inseparable relationship. Be it coronary heart diseases like stroke, respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases and pneumonia, adverse reproductive abnormalities or even cancer, the harmful effects of tobacco-use are almost always certain to leave its fingerprints behind. In fact, smoking and tobacco consumption have been found to cause a host of other maladies: cataract, adverse complications related to slow wound healing and respiratory problems, low bone density and risks of hip fracture and peptic ulcers. If the above familiar medical conditions fail to ring the alarm bells then the following information will surely give us the intimations of mortality. An urban study in Mumbai has reported that the risk of dying is more than 50% higher for smokers and every year 700,000 to 10,00,000 deaths in India are caused by smoking.

While health-related risks of tobacco-use are hard to overlook, its economic ill-effects are no less disturbing. Smoking is sure to damage health but no less deleterious is its effect on our economic well-being and prosperity. In a report by WHO titled Tobacco Increases The Poverty Of Individuals and Families, it is said that in most countries, tobacco use tends to be higher among the poor. They spend a large part of their income on tobacco, which could have otherwise been spent on meeting basic human needs such as food, shelter, education and health care. Globally, 84% of smokers live in developing countries and transitional economies around the world. A study of smoking prevalence among men in Chennai in 1997 showed that the highest rate of smoking occurred among the illiterate population (64%). As India is still a developing country, it’s really shameful to see how powerless we are in freeing ourselves from the bondage of such unhealthy addiction, which is leaching away our economic wealth at both individual and national levels.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist). For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
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