The Hindu Business Line : Just a smoke-screen?

WITH THE Information and Broadcasting Ministry coming to an agreement with the Health Ministry, the decks appear to have been cleared for the ban on scenes of cigarette smoking in films and television programmes. A large section of the entertainment industry has remained opposed to the move, which it sees as a needless curb on creativity. The opposition appears to have had some impact, as the ban will now come into force from October 2 — Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary — and not from August 1, as planned earlier. Perhaps, the Government reckons that the ban would stick better if seen in the context of the strict standards of moral conduct that the Father of the Nation lived by. After all, if the ban actually helps curtail tobacco consumption, one would think it ought to come into force sooner rather than later. More so, when there are no serious issues of implementation.

It is a well-settled principle that democratic societies cannot be effectively organised on the principle of liberalism in its most pristine form. Few challenge the premise that individuals must submit themselves to restrictions on their conduct and freedom that are decreed in the broader public interest. Further, the notion of what constitutes reasonable curbs on freedom has been expanded post-9/11. Having said that, the latest decision does raise a number of uncomfortable questions. For instance, in a situation where the re-runs of old films and television programmes vastly outnumber the screening of new ones, it is far from certain that the ban would have any immediate impact, even assuming for the moment that the depiction of scenes involving smoking does indeed have an adverse influence among viewers.

There does not seem to be any coordinated approach to curbing the consumption of tobacco products. The Finance Ministry has not exploited fully the potential of fiscal measures to reduce consumption. It has adopted a benign tax regime on `beedis', which are consumed by a section of the population that is most vulnerable to the hazards of tobacco consumption. Then, far from curbing production, there are agricultural extension programmes aimed at improving yields of the tobacco crop. No serious attempt has been made to wean farmers away from cultivating it. Further, there is no institutional mechanism for setting apart taxes levied on tobacco products for specific tobacco-related health programmes. Such a device alone would convince the public that the Government views tobacco levies as anti-consumption measures and not something that sustains its revenue mobilisation efforts.

But by far the weakest link in the latest policy initiative is the scope for the tobacco industry to circumvent the ban through clever in-film advertising of brand extension products that would be hard to prove as mere examples of surrogate advertising. The ban on smoking scenes in films is the easier part. A more arduous task awaits the Government.

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