Owing to a growing awareness in the West about the threat posed by tobacco smoking, the cigarette companies made a frontal assault on the vulnerable Third World markets during the past decade. The result: A recent study shows that the ‘smoker’s paradise’ India is in the grip of a smoking epidemic that is likely to cause nearly a million deaths a year by 2010.
Conducted by The Center for Global Health Research at the University of Toronto, the study predicts that “one in five of all male deaths (and one in 20 of all female deaths) between the ages of 30 and 69 will be caused by smoking. The study, conducted by a team of doctors and scientists from India, Canada and Britain, has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.”
(Last week, a WHO study revealed that nearly two-thirds of the world’s smokers live in 10 countries led by China, which accounts for nearly 30 percent, and India with about 10 percent. They are followed by Indonesia, Russia, the United States, Japan, Brazil, Bangladesh, Germany and Turkey.)
According to Muneeza Naqvi of the Associated Press: “The study, one of the most comprehensive ever in India, sent 900 field workers to survey 1.1 million homes across the country. They compared the smoking history of 74,000 adults who died from 2001 to 2003 with 78,000 living adults.
“While an increasing number of countries prohibit smoking in public places, people in India freely puff away in playgrounds, railway stations, sidewalk cafes and even hospitals.”
India has enacted a number of laws banning smoking in various public places, but most are routinely ignored.
The BBC quotes Professor Amartya Sen of Harvard University: “It is truly remarkable that one single factor, namely smoking, which is entirely preventable, accounts for nearly one in 10 of all deaths in India.” More here…
Swaraaj Chauhan describes his two-decade-long stint as a full-time journalist as eventful, purposeful, and full of joy and excitement. In 1993 he could foresee a different work culture appearing on the horizon, and decided to devote full time to teaching journalism (also, partly, with a desire to give back to the community from where he had enriched himself so much.)
Alongside, he worked for about a year in 1993 for the US State Department’s SPAN magazine, a nearly five-decade-old art and culture monthly magazine promoting US-India relations. It gave him an excellent opportunity to learn about things American, plus the pleasure of playing tennis in the lavish American embassy compound in the heart of New Delhi.
In !995 he joined WWF-India as a full-time media and environment education consultant and worked there for five years travelling a great deal, including to Husum in Germany as a part of the international team to formulate WWF’s Eco-tourism policy.
He taught journalism to honors students in a college affiliated to the University of Delhi, as also at the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication where he lectured on “Development Journalism” to mid-career journalists/Information officers from the SAARC, African, East European and Latin American countries, for eight years.
In 2004 the BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST) selected him as a Trainer/Mentor for India under a European Union project. In 2008/09 He completed another European Union-funded project for the BBC WST related to Disaster Management and media coverage in two eastern States in India — West Bengal and Orissa.
Last year, he spent a couple of months in Australia and enjoyed trekking, and also taught for a while at the University of South Australia.
Recently, he was appointed as a Member of the Board of Studies at Chitkara University in Chandigarh, a beautiful city in North India designed by the famous Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier. He also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students there.
He loves trekking, especially in the hills, and never misses an opportunity to play a game of tennis. The Western and Indian classical music are always within his reach for instant relaxation.
And last, but not least, is his firm belief in the power of the positive thought to heal oneself and others.