KERALA - Smoke and Ire
As the crackdown on smokers begins, there?s cheers and jeers
Visitors to Kerala be warned: if you light up, you may end up in jail. Half-smoked cigarettes and beedies are hurriedly put away at the sight of a cop?s uniform, thanks to a court-sponsored crackdown on smoking in public places.
Initial police enthusiasm in enforcing the July 12 high court ban has since been watered down by the Left Democratic Front government over poll-eve concerns with alienating sections of the population addicted to tobacco. The police have also had to contend with chief minister E.K. Nayanar?s personal discomfort with the court ban. "The law prohibits urinating on the streets yet people still do it, don?t they?" he is reported to have remarked while exhaling smoke from a beedi.
Despite the political brakes, the campaign to turn the state?s open spaces into tobacco-free zones has succeeded in keeping smokers from going public with their habit. After the early rounds of arrests and fines, flaunting a cigarette has acquired the odium of a social stigma. Smokers are coming around to the view that it?s more productive to kick the habit than go through the ignominy of being hauled up before a magistrate. If smoking was ever a status symbol, today it commands zero respect here. "Smoking is now seen as a criminal act," laments a nicotine addict who heads a high-profile company.
Public smoking attracts provisions under the Indian Penal Code and the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981. An offender is fined up to Rs 500 or jailed for 15 days for failure to meet the fine. Close to 1,000 offenders have been rounded up so far (see chart).
The police action has drawn its share of flak. The Confederation of Human Rights Organisation has called for a suspension of the crackdown on smokers on grounds that the widespread powers given to the police to enforce the ban are likely to be abused. Counters sub-inspector M. Radhakrishnan Nair of the Museum police station in Thiruvananthapuram: "That is a prejudiced view. The truth is that smokers are grateful for the ban as it forces them to stop smoking."
The court?s sweeping definition of a public place as any place where people congregate has spread alarm among wholesale cigarette and beedi dealers. Apart from listed places like educational institutions, hospitals, shops, restaurants, cinemas, factories, bars, bus stops, railway platforms and so on, the court ban covers virtually every open space. And that threatens the livelihood of workers engaged in the tobacco trade, which has a turnover of Rs 1,200 crore and is a major source of excise duty and other taxes. "If the ban continues, workers will have to be laid off in large numbers," warns a leading Kannur-based beedi manufacturer.
The ban is also unpopular in city bars. The once smoke-filled watering holes of Kochi are going through a lull. Notes Saji, a waiter: "Drinking and smoking go together. The ban on smoking has affected the consumption of alcohol." Cigarette sales in local bars have dipped from 1,000 packs a day to virtually nil. The Kerala Bar Hotel Association hopes to be dropped from the court?s list of public places coming under the ban.
Clearly, those who feel victimised by the smoking ban are those who earn a profit from tobacco. Supporters of the ban?they appear to be legion, if survey figures are any indication?argue the perils of passive smoking cannot afford to be downplayed.
The court order painstakingly documents the lethal properties of cigarettes and the toll of tobacco smoke on non-smokers. None of which shocks Monamma Kokkad, a professor of English in Kottayam, who, along with a friend, K. Ramakrishnan, filed a public interest litigation that led to the ban. Monamma has researched the hazards of passive smoking and crusaded against the "social evil" for years. "The most painful revelation for me was that smoking can lead to an abortion," she reminisces. That?s when she decided to move the court.
She has since been flooded with letters and phone calls congratulating her initiative. Most of them are from chronic smokers. A chain-smoker wrote in saying he gave up smoking after reading the verdict. If other states follow the Kerala example, the day is not far when India may be able to declare itself a no-smoking zone.
(Venu Menon)
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