Asian Window

After breathing fire and brimstone against smoking on screen — he wants an official government of India ban on actors lighting up in movies — India’s health minister Anubami Ramadoss spoke out on April 30 against movies that show actors drinking alcohol. Ramadoss lashed out at actors for scenes that showed them drowning their sorrows in alcohol. “Actors drinking on screen will encourage youngsters to take up the habit,” he said.

Bollywood’s badshah, Amitabh Bachchan is not amused. A democracy must treat its citizens as ‘autonomous individuals capable of rational judgement’ writes Bachchan in an open letter to Ramadoss in his blog on May 4. Quit preaching censorship and spend on public awareness campaigns on alcohol abuse, he tells the minister.

I appreciate your concern for the general health of our nation, particularly so as this is your professional remit as minister. Indeed, I admire and encourage your speaking out against addictive and dangerous substances that cause early mortality and violence by their abuse.

However, these addictive substances are structural aspects of our economy and it is in this manner where government action would be most effective: penalties for their production and sale would convince an electorate of the serious intentions of your administration. Due to the intimate relationship between a healthy and dynamic democracy and education, punitive financial measure MUST be allied to better public health campaigns that do not merely pronounce upon behaviours, but actually inform and persuade.

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