Who Called The Fire Brigade?

Cigarettes, Kurt Vonnegut said, were always the classiest way to commit suicide. In India, too, smoking cigarettes was once perceived as a cool, seductive, natural social activity, which aided thought and reflection, sharpened discussion, helped a writer find the mot juste. But the perceptions of urban Indians are changing. Recently, at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, capital of the bindaas counterculture, authorities tried to ban the sale of tobacco products, a step towards making the entire campus a no-smoking zone. Could there be a surer sign that cigarettes are becoming the centre of a new moral battle in institutional spaces and living rooms across the country?

Overall consumption of tobacco in India has increased over the last 25 years, but that's thanks to a growing tribe of beedi-smokers and tobacco-chewers. The cigarette's share of tobacco consumption has actually declined, both relatively—from 23 to 15 per cent—and in absolute terms, from 86 million kg in 1981-82 to 76 million in the last fiscal. While the average American smokes 1,886 cigarettes a year, the abstemious Indian, who puffed 144 cigarettes in 1995, now smokes only 85. That is among the lowest per capita figures in the world.

This is in part because of the duties and taxes that make it more expensive to smoke cigarettes, but also the impact of Western anti-smoking campaigns targeting the urban middle classes; and, since the late '90s, a spate of Indian anti-smoking legislations and civil society initiatives (see timeline). Smoking remains an aspirational symbol for many Indians, but less and less so. A lot of people are beginning to view cigarettes as a deplorable public health hazard as well as a distasteful social imposition—and are not afraid to say so.

"Smokers are now being banished to the landing," says Alyque Padamsee, ex-smoker and advertising guru, "Nobody really wants them in a room—they've become the new pariahs." Padamsee is part of a vanguard of hosts who don't mind making smokers' lives difficult. "The smoke irritates my eyes and the smell irritates my nose. So if I'm asked 'Do you mind if I smoke?' I say, 'Yes, I do, go outside!'" Padamsee feels the message is starting to sink in. "Smokers are always saying, 'I'm terribly sorry, I can't get rid of it, it's a wretched habit, a filthy habit.' I don't know any smokers who still think it's manly and virile to smoke. When they're around other people, they're in a constant apologetic mode. Smokers are like the dinosaurs. They're on their way out." Journalist Praful Bidwai feels the same. "It's pretty abnormal that people should smoke," says the ex-smoker. "I haven't come across a single intelligent smoker who can defend smoking. The smarter ones feel guilty, and it's important that they be encouraged to quit by socially stigmatising smoking in living rooms."

For many people, the stigmatisation of smokers is a sign of progress, a sign that sensible medical advice will always come up trumps over the perversities of fashion, corporate cynicism and simple inertia. Like Supreme Court advocate Indira Jaisingh, who argued for the central legislation in 2003 that banned smoking in all enclosed public places. "It isn't just a question of social etiquette," she points out. "People have developed bronchial diseases simply by exposure to other people smoking. Many non-smokers have told me they want to sue their employers for allowing smoking in the workplace."

However, others—not all of them smokers—are chafed by this backlash, and feel that the anti-smoking vibe is a new form of intolerance. "Everyone has this common sense acceptance that passive smoking is bad, but I'm not aware of any studies on how bad it is for you," says Ritu Menon, occasional smoker and publisher of Women Unlimited. "All this opprobrium attached to it annoys me because there are lots of other things that are objectionable, why don't people jump up and down about those? Men urinating against public walls, for example. I would like to see Praful start a campaign against that." At a sitdown dinner now, it is almost unthinkable for someone to light up, sighs Menon, nostalgically remembering the time when "an after-dinner cigarette used to be a very congenial thing".

After smoking to her heart's content, Malvika Singh, the editor of Seminar, quit the habit a few years ago, but unlike other ex-smokers, she is not in campaigning mode. "I hate the crusading part of it, because I don't think that's how health campaigns should be run," says Malvika, "Not by creating social stigmas! Cigarettes are never going to disappear. People will probably cut down, and the public health campaigns will adjust to that—they'll say, okay, after a good meal, you can still have a cigar, that won't kill you."

Not if Padamsee has his way. "My most disagreeable experience is with people who smoke cigars, like Prahlad Kakkar, and a lot of my friends, because there isn't only smoke, but also that dreadful smell," he says. "They're always going on and on about the wonders of a Cuban cigar rolled smooth against the thighs of Cuban women. I tell them OK, I'll hold it, I'll stroke it. But I won't smoke it, no way."

For Chetan Seth, India's cigar baron, who shares Malvika's dislike of crusaders, that is, of course, blasphemy. "I always respond to a polite request, but if someone says to me aggressively, put that out, I say, if you don't like it, you move! You change your seat! You don't complain about emissions, you don't care about smog or about the environment at all." He looks fondly at the smouldering Habano in his hand. "How can you mind this aromatic smoke?" What it comes down to, for many smokers, is that a cigarette is part of a daily routine that enables them to be happy and productive and to get on with what they consider to be bigger things.

"In the entertainment industry, everybody smokes, because it's an immediate stress-buster," says Yudhister Urs, alias VJ Yudi. "I suppose you could meditate for 10 minutes instead, but then you would fall behind schedule. And a cigarette is instant gratification." He has an unlikely ally in Arundhati Ghose, ex-United Nations ambassador and now a foreign policy analyst, for whom the new anti-smoking regime is a constant irritant. "At conferences and seminars you have to take your own breaks, and go smoke on the road," she says. "And it becomes a question of your commitment to smoking versus your commitment to nuclear disarmament."