Indian tobacco workers win health insurance

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New Delhi is to offer free health insurance to millions of workers who make hand-rolled tobacco sticks, known as bidis – or the poor man’s smoke.

The Indian cabinet, led by Manmohan Singh, prime minister, signed off a proposal this week to extend medical cover to the bidi industry’s entire 5.5m workforce within three years.

The move has drawn praise from parliamentarians despite an international trend to withdraw state support from the tobacco industry in the interests of public health.

The industry’s magnates include some who are close to power, including one cabinet minister. Praful Patel, the minister for heavy industries and former aviation minister, owns one of India’s biggest bidi and tobacco-derivatives businesses, Ceejay Tobacco.

He is a close political ally of Sharad Pawar, a Maharashtra strongman and the agriculture minister. Their influence is reflected by the bidi’s protected status, alongside chewing tobacco, as one of the cheapest, most lightly regulated and least taxed tobacco products in the world.

India has a 10th of the world’s smokers and is one of the fastest growing tobacco markets. An overwhelming number of India’s smokers, estimated at 100m, puff on the bidi, an unfiltered tightly rolled leaf.

A highly affordable cigarette, it is the bulwark of a uniquely Indian industry with political clout. Yet India introduced legislation three years ago banning smoking in public places, becoming one of a handful of developing countries to crack down on the habit.

Last year the government blocked new foreign investment in the tobacco industry, a move interpreted by foreign companies as protecting local interests.

“On the one hand, we are trying to phase out tobacco from the country, but on the other hand this creates a disincentive for people who are thinking of quitting the tobacco trade . . . because the moment you leave the trade you lose the medical benefits,” said Hemant Goswami of Tob­acco Free India, a lobby group. “This medical benefit will keep you in the trade for a lifetime.”

Medical benefits should be extended to all the country’s workers and farmers, not just workers in a single industry, said Mr Goswami.

Mallikariun Kharge, the labour minister, said 1m bidi workers would be brought under the medical cover this financial year.