Can we afford to burden our law enforcement agencies with this new crime when they are unable to protect us against much more serious problems like bombs in our bazaars and gang rape in our streets? Can we afford to burden the judiciary with punishing smokers when terrorists and other murderers remain untried for years and when the backlog in our courts will take more than 300 years to clear?

It has been said before in this column and needs to be repeated that we have the largest population of young people in the world. Half of all Indians are under the age of 25. The two things they need more than anything else are access to decent pubic healthcare and decent schools. It is scandalous that the Indian state has been unable to provide these two most important tools of empowerment and if you examine why you will discover that it is because we have our policies and priorities all muddled up.

One of the legacies of our dark decades of Nehruvian socialism is our ability to waste taxpayers’ money on make believe public utilities. Travel through India’s villages and you will see endless examples of what this means. Half-built sheds without teachers or books that we call schools. Crumbling, empty buildings that we call hospitals. Poles stuck in fields for electricity and rusty hand pumps that we pass off as water supply. The Health Minister now forces us to spend a few thousand crores more on trying to enforce a ban that may improve the personal health of a few heavy smokers but will do nothing to improve public health.

... contd.