HEALTH GROUPS ON BIDI PRODUCTS

Several public health groups, including the Voluntary Health Association of India, have urged Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to ensure that all tobacco products, especially bidis, are taxed at uniformly high rates under the new GST framework. The public group, which also includes Tata Memorial Hospital, says that the total tax burden currently is at 53 per cent, 19.5 per cent and 56 per cent respectively for cigarettes, bidis and smokeless tobacco in India. It is much lower than the level recommended by the WHO, which stands at 75 per cent of the tobacco retail price.

Stating that even the Union Budget 2017-18 did not address the issue, with an effective tax increase of 6 per cent, lower than at least the 10 per cent increase witnessed in previous budgets. It said the government’s taxation policies in the tobacco sector have left public health concerns unaddressed. “There is no need to give tax subsidy to a product that carries a product warning that it kills. In fact, it is the cheapest and unregulated poison currently available in the market. With current tax pattern, consumer and the nation are losers, whereas handful of business families (bidi and chewing tobacco industry owners) are making vulgar profits by selling this weapon of mass destruction,” said Pankaj Chaturvedi, Oncologist at Tata Memorial Hospital.

“The tobacco industry knows how to exploit its consumers and this is why it increases prices much more than the tax increases that the government proposes every year,” says Rijo John, Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur. The total direct and indirect cost of diseases attributable to tobacco use is a staggering Rs 1.04 lakh crore ($17 billion) in 2011 or 1.16% of India’s GDP.