Rama-doze, what have you done?

India has enforced a smoking ban in all public places from October 2nd, 2008

Many newspapers carried this headline or something similar a few days ago. Mr. Ramadoss,the Health Minister of India who was behind asses of King Khan and AB to stop smoking on screen found that this time he could have his way. The smoking ban is enforced in many places as per the newpapers and a single article by the government in there. I cannot say what Ramadoss has done is a good thing or bad. However one thing for sure, it cannot be counted a an achievement. Without any proper infrastructure and methodology this is the most haphazard way to enforce something. He has been behind the people who make the news due to this petty issue when as a Health minister he could have done way better. All this looks like a publicity stunt to show that he is concerned for health of citizens of India.

Lets approach this problem analytically. Something what consultants do. India's population is 125 crores. Atleast 50% of the population can be safely assumed to be below 18 years. So that leave about 60 crore people who are eligible to smoke. Assuming a sex ratio of 1 (Its just an assumption) we get that about 30 crore males and 30 crore females are eligible to smoke. In India 30% of the population is below poverty line who cant afford more than a dollar a day, so they would chose not to smoke when there is fire in the belly!!
This leaves about 21 crore males and 21 crore females. In India, the percentage of women who smoke would surely be below 10%. For whatever reasons, smoking is not a turn on amongst women (Ref: Orkut, Facebook, Myspace). This leaves about 23.1 crore people vulnerable to the tobacco companies.
About 20% of the population of India is beyond 60 years. They have many medical problems. An they would not want to add more to those woes by smoking. As everyone knows "Smoking Kills". This leaves us with 18.5 crore people who are target segment.
Out of these people, I would take a conservative estimate of 70% people who would be healthy and remain to be healty. So they would choose not to smoke although they fall in the prime customer segment for the tobacco companies.
So now we have zeroed down to 6 crore peple who consume tobacco products. Out of these 30 would prefer gutka and pan to smoking. The set of people doing both may not be very significant.

Therefore we have about 4 crore people in India, who smoke cigarettes and add to the business of cigarette companies.

Even after conservative estimates, one this is clear that Congress is losing votes of this 8% population which can be a significant swing. For such an insignificant part of the population Ramadoss is ready to give away Rs 8500 crore excise that government gets every year and some vote bank too!!

Whatever has been done is done.Now we will try to understand why Ramadoss took this step rather that forming a public health system which can benefit 100% of the population in a country where there is a dearth of good health services. The private players make merry as the government is incapable of handling such a scale. So nothing is done every term by any health minister. Ramadoss took up this issue to come to the limelight. Same was the case when he went against Venugopal, the director of AIIMS. It is very clear that Ramadoss is not concerned about public health but about his publicity in the media.
As good citizens its our duty to question the minister who seems to be so concerned about public health to develop a medical network for the future. But I am sure he wont be able to answer the question. Because that question will expose him in media. Its too big a risk for him and his government and also too big an investment!!

So Mr. Rama-doze get up from your sleep and look at real issues rather than shining away in front of the media!!

PS: I hate people who smoke cigarettes behind my back :-)