Salman

, then Union law minister, said at last year’s Godfrey Phillips National Bravery Awards ceremony held in

, “We are here to celebrate acts of courage.” The suave

, currently external affairs minister, didn’t feel out of place and was at his eloquent best. Celebrating

is indeed an

intent, but what raises eyebrows is the corporation behind these awards, and the apparent endorsers of such sponsorships.

KhurshidChandigarhKhurshidvalourhonourable“Any such act that gives legitimacy to tobacco firms is against the spirit of the law enacted against tobacco in 2003, which was done in line with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control [FCTC],” says renowned lawyer and activist Prashant Bhushan. FCTC, one of the world’s most effective tobacco control treaties, was ratified by 168 countries vowing to use stringent laws on tobacco which, according to WHO, kills half of its users. India was one of the earliest signatories of the FCTC. The Indian law — Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act 2003 — envisaged a shrinking space for tobacco in the public sphere.“As in many other spheres, the law is in place [in tobacco control] thanks to pressure from civil society groups, but its implementation is very poor,” adds Bhushan referring to the recent Supreme Court ruling which hit out at the Centre for “conniving” with tobacco companies (see The Court Order...). Citing the health hazards of tobacco, the apex court said: “Of course, you [Central government] are not bothered. You are more bothered about money.”The government lawyer failed to turn up at hearings over one of the new rules that insist on pictorial ads on cigarette packets. This led to non-implementation of such rules for eight years until the SC intervened. The court also blamed the Bombay High Court — which offered a stay in 2005 against implementation of the new tobacco rules — for “not applying [its] mind”.Points out Bhavna Mukhopadhyay, executive director at public health organisation Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI): “The non-appearance of the counsel engaged by the Union of India on the dates appointed for hearing the point of sale of tobacco ad case was quite intriguing and this shows there is a lot of industry pressure on the government.” True, after all, tobacco companies do fund political parties. Conversely, state-run companies hold major stakes in listed tobacco companies.According to a right to information (RTI) disclosure, the Union government revealed that in 2009-10 ITC has made donations to several political parties, including the Congress, the BJP, Samajwadi Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal, DMK, Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party.Mukhopadhyay says that all this amounts to violation of Article 5.3 of the FCTC, which requires that “in setting and implementing their public health policies with respect to tobacco control, parties shall act to pro-tect these policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law”.According to the Article 5.3 of the FCTC, parties (member-states) to the convention should refuse to: treat tobacco corporations as “stakeholders” in public health policy; invest in the tobacco industry; partner with tobacco corporations to promote public health or other purposes; accept the tobacco industry’s so-called corporate social responsibility schemes, which are really just marketing by another name, and so on.FCTC also insists on “no partnerships, non-binding, or non-enforceable agreements between tobacco industry and governments”. Its guidelines oppose any voluntary contributions by the tobacco industry to governments; investments by governments or public officials in tobacco industry and so on.As of the quarter ended March 2013, the state-owned Life Insurance Corporation, a ‘specified undertaking’ of the Unit Trust of India, New India Assurance Co, General Insurance Corp of India, Oriental Insurance Co and National Insurance Co were shareholders in ITC.While ITC refused to comment on queries from ET Magazine about contentious ads — such as scrolls on smoking scenes in movies, pictorial ads on cigarettes and so on — responses to an RTI application reveal that the Union health ministry is constantly hobbled by interference from other ministries such as law, information and broadcasting, and agriculture in implementing new rules.“It hasn’t yet sunk in among our rulers that tobacco control requires a unified action. Unlike issues such as AIDS control or TB control, tobacco control needs cohesive action. The health ministry alone can’t accomplish it,” says a health ministry official asking not to be named because he is not authorised to speak to the media.Referring to the delay in implementing scrolls warning of the dangers of tobacco consumption in smoking scenes, a government lawyer, who also didn’t wish to be identified, notes that it was the information ministry that stood in the way.The response to an RTI plea with the I&B ministry confirms this.The I&B ministry, says the response, made a formal reference to the ministry of health asking them “to keep the notification in abeyance till the time the practical difficulties faced by the film industry in giving effect to the notification are resolved amicably to the satisfaction of all stakeholders”.“Till the issue gets resolved amicably, the ministry of information and broadcasting is directing the Central Board of Film Certification [CBFC] to maintain status quo and adhere to the certification process as was being done before the issue of notification dated 27/10/2011,” the response to the RTI application on the issue said.The Centre seems to have no interest in phasing out tobacco consumption, point out activists. And of course, consumption figures offer the big picture. Projections from WHO show that India will have the highest growth in tobacco-related deaths over the next five years compared with any other country.The average annual increase in tobacco consumption over the past three years in the country is more than 4%. In a country where 27.5 crore of its people consume tobacco products — either through chewing or smoking — 1 in every 5 male deaths and 1 in every 20 female deaths are caused by tobacco smoking, according to a study by the government of India.And with prevalence of smoking declining in the West, tobacco majors are out to target countries such as India and China where they see robust growth, says WHO official Thomas Zeltner, who helped frame the FCTC. For his strong position on tobacco control, he has earned the nickname “Tobacco Taliban”.In an earlier interview with ET Magazine Zeltner had dwelt at length on how tobacco companies zealously tried to derail tobacco control measures by trying to tarnish the reputation of health activists and attempting to block flow of funds for anti-tobacco initiatives. “[Tobacco industry looks at] what are the weaknesses of a person. If I am someone who visits prostitutes [which I do not] the tobacco industry destroys my reputation. First they blackmail you and then they destroy you,” Zeltner had said. “The big profit markets for them [Big Tobacco] are there [in countries like India and China]. The West is a losing battle for them.”For her part, Mukhopadhyay says that instead of discouraging the production and consumption of tobacco, the Indian government is busy promoting the industry. “Even though tobacco comes under state jurisdiction, the central ministries play an important role in the growth and development of the tobacco industry.Six ministries of the Union government — agriculture, commerce, finance, industry, labour, and rural development — deal with one or the other specified aspects of the industry. In general, government policy has been to promote production, improve quality and ensure remunerative prices for growers.”She classified “government interventions” into institutional and regulatory support; price and market support; export promotion; research and development; and direct fertiliser and credit subsidies. “All these interventions involve explicit or implicit subsidies for the tobacco industry.” All of this, she avers, is thanks to huge vested interest in terms of tobacco producers and farmers lobbies.The Supreme Court ruling underlines that anxiety over connivance: “While disposing of the appeals, we consider it necessary to express our serious reservations and regret about the manner in which concerned officers of the Union of India dealt with the serious issue involving challenge to the validity of law enacted by Parliament and the rules framed thereunder. The non-appearance of the counsel engaged by the Union of India on the dates appointed for hearing the case is quite intriguing. Prima facie, it gives an impression that the counsel engaged by the Union of India had some other idea and, therefore, he refrained from representing the cause not only of its client but the people of India….”India’s tobacco industry is one of the largest in the world, having the second-largest area planted to tobacco leaf after China. Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bihar and Tamil Nadu are the major tobacco-producing states. Around 80% of India’s production and area under tobacco is in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka.Mukhopadhyay says that while no accurate statistics are available, the Central Tobacco Research Institute in its annual report of 2010-11 has estimated that in India more than 6 million farmers and 20 million farm labourers are engaged in tobacco farming, spread across 15 states. Though tobacco occupies only 0.3% of the total cultivated area in India, it contributes significantly to the national exchequer.Excise earnings from tobacco amounted to Rs 8,182.3 crore in 2010-11, accounting for 12% of all India excise collections. Tobacco contributed Rs 903.38 crore by way of foreign exchange in 2010-11, she says. ITC controls large parts of tobacco crop auctions in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.“Clearly,” the government lawyer quoted earlier says, “nothing has been done on alternative cropping to tobacco. Also if you visit the Tobacco Board of India’s website, its objective is to promote production/sale of tobacco, in contravention to FCTC.”Strangely, as pointed out by authors Upendra Bhojani, Vidya Venkataraman and Bheemaray Manganawar in their paper titled “Challenging Ties between State and Tobacco Industry: Advocacy Lessons from India”: “The Indian Tobacco Board (ITB), a statutory body established in 1975 under the union ministry of commerce and industry (UMCI) to regulate tobacco industry, has a mandate to promote the Indian varieties of tobacco and development of tobacco industry in India. This mandate of ITB has remained unchanged since its inception in spite of more recent tobacco control commitments by the Indian government including, ratification of FCTC in 2004 and enactment of the national tobacco control legislation called the Cigarette and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act (COTPA) in 2003.”According to the health ministry official, most political parties have their reasons to cosy up with the tobacco industry. “While many of the political parties gain from their association with Big Tobacco in terms of funds, others benefit from smaller variants of cigarettes such as beedis. Powerful lobbies in Andhra and Maharashtra wield tremendous influence on powerful politicians,” he says.Meanwhile, a Delhi-based tobacco expert who tracks one of the top tobacco companies, says that the industry may not immediately see a reversal in its fortunes. “The future looks bright, for the time being,” he says. However, he expects higher taxes to bring down prevalence of smoking and hit the industry in the long run. While ITC didn’t reply to queries about how it expects implementation of new tobacco rules to hurt its business, Udayan Lall, director at The Tobacco Institute of India, didn’t reply to e-mail queries about the future of the Indian tobacco industry, which has been protesting against high taxes.Geneva-based Chitra Subramaniam Duella — who in the 1980s as a journalist broke the Bofors story and now works in public health, among other areas — says the Supreme Court’s reprimand is a wake-up call for our political class. Duella, a former WHO official who was part of a small team that investigated the tobacco industry’s influence on the FCTC, adds: “Tobacco kills and corrupts everything it touches. The WHO says tobacco companies have no option but to use deceitful marketing and advertising to sell their product which is inherently deadly.”Duella, who will shortly organise a public hearing on tobacco control in New Delhi, finds successive governments capitulating on promises. “What is preventing them from fulfilling an undertaking given to the international community in the name of the people of India? What is stopping them from implementing their own law of 2003?” asks Duella, the founder of Switzerland-based CSD Consulting.Like many tobacco control workers, she hastens to warn that India is hunting ground for tobacco companies. With 6,000 new recruits and 3,300 deaths daily, the industry is growing by manufacturing death and disease, she says. Against this backdrop government sharing the dais with those whom India’s apex court referred to as “merchants of death” doesn’t sound like a good idea.(Additional reporting by Samanwaya Rautray)