Here we go again. Another grand but doomed announcement,
another good idea set up for failure!
I’m talking about the ‘Smoke Free City’ declaration made by
Kohima Deputy Commissioner during a smoke free campaign programme held in
Kohima on April 28. According to media reports, the DC addressed the gathering
of students from 22 schools and declared our State capital a Smoke Free City.
He invited the schools to be ambassadors in bringing about the transformation.
All that sounds fine, right? It’s what comes next that makes
the declaration a joke. The DC added that guidelines and rules for adherence by
public and enforcement by the district administration and police would be
brought out without delay!
My question: Why did the DC making such a major announcement
when there is obviously no strategy in place to implement it? Was it a spur of
the moment thing like – “Oh my gosh, the students are shouting all these
slogans for a smoke free city, let me just declare it to please them”?
Seriously, what was he thinking? How can he make such a proclamation
without first working out the implementation details with the various
departments and agencies that will have to be involved in taking the programme
forward?
Declaring a state capital smoke free is not a small matter
and doing that without any enforcement plan or infrastructure in place can only
be termed irresponsible. For it to succeed there will have to be a system, both
for monitoring compliance and for prosecuting violators. The monitoring would have
to include a process for inspection of businesses and the like for compliance
and for this to be effective the inspectors would have to be given proper
training. Then there is also the need to work out which areas will be exempt
and under what rules. Resources are needed to educate businesses, train
inspectors, coordinate the inspection process and compensate personnel and
therefore a funding mechanism has to be identified for this purpose.
You get where I’m going with this. By the DC’s own
admission, no enforcement plan, even the most basic, has been made to make the
town smoke free and yet he goes ahead and declares it and then says that rules
and regulations for ‘adherence by public and enforcement by the district
administration and police would be brought out without delay’. Given the many
details that will have to be worked out if the ban is to really work, how does
he think he can bring out an effective system of enforcement ‘without delay’? And
FYI, ‘without delay’ in government jargon usually takes years with matters left
hanging without any action. One can only assume he was speaking in that
sense.
In the meantime, with no workable administrative rules yet
in place and no time frame for their implementation, we’re stuck with a hollow
label that will bring us nothing but embarrassment – as if we don’t have enough
of that already! Just imagine this scenario. An out of state friend asks you
about your smoke free city and how it’s working out. Do you say, ‘Oh it has
been declared but it’s yet to be implemented’?
By the way, a law banning smoking in public places is
already in place. Look where we are on that. A ban on sale of tobacco and
tobacco products in the vicinity of schools and educational institutions is
also in existence, notifications of which keep appearing at regular intervals.
But we all know where that has got us. Now we can add to these the unplanned
Smoke Free City tag. I think that’s called adding insult to injury!
There are plenty of other rules and regulations, bans and
notifications strewn all around us. We don’t suffer any shortage in this
department and most of them are absolutely needed for the good of the people as
a whole. But the problem is that there’s never any proper plan on how they’re
going to be executed. Hence all the rules and regulations and bans are mostly only
on paper and nobody really gives a hoot about them, neither the public nor the
authorities. And you really can’t blame the public, can you? If there’s no
enforcement then what’s to stop them from doing what they’ve always done.
I sincerely hope I’m proved wrong and our capital town
becomes truly smoke free. The health risks associated with exposure to second-hand
smoke are serious and I wholeheartedly support any government initiative to
protect the public, as should each and every citizen. But simply labelling our
town smoke free does not make it so and you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not
holding my breath at this point. I find it a little difficult to be optimistic
in the absence of an administrative roadmap towards the goal.