The Devil of Economic Fundamentalism

by Javed Jamil

had no business to stop them. If smoking adversely affects their health or kills them, it is after all their own life. The second argument was that education was the right way to wean people away from smoking; awareness rather than compulsion was the method of choice to keep them away from cigarettes. When they finally realize the damag­ing effect of smoking on their health, they would be more than willing to give it up forever. To make it sure that before they hold a cigarette between their lips, they know what they are up to, the cigarette packets could have a statutory warning: smoking is injurious to health. In some countries, when the opposition grew, it was also conceded that the advertisements promoting cigarettes would not appear in the government-owned media. The tobacco manufactur­ers were confident that if legal ban could somehow be averted, with the passage of time the campaign would slow down and whatever the impact of awareness programmes could have been upon the consumers would be neutralised by the glorification of smok­ing through films and other media. They have proved right. The masses have almost compromised with the situation. Cigar­ettes continue to attract the consumers and earnings through them have been multiplying and now again they are busy sponsor­ing national and international sports events, the 1996 World Cup in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka being one of the examples; it was sponsored by the Wills. Benson & Hedges regularly sponsor the one-day matches in Australia. When recently several cases were filed for compensation against the tobacco companies in the US and the companies came under tremendous pressure, they conceded to pay com­pensation to the smokers suffering from lung cancers and other diseases. Yet again, they have succeeded in thwarting the campaign for total ban on manufacturing; and very soon the world would know that these companies have lost virtually nothing.

  The third argument advanced by the cigarette producers was that they were one of the major sources of revenue for the government that charges excise duty on cigarettes. As will be seen below in the case of alcohol industry, this argument too holds no water.

  Drinking too like smoking has time and again been the target of moralists and social activists. In most of the Islamic countries, the sale of liquor is legally prohibited and in India too, prohibition is in force in several states. The evidences have continued to accumulate to show that mortality and morbidity due to alcohol-related diseases are ever on the rise. More than 3 million people annually die due to problems directly related to smoking. Alcohol is also responsi­ble for a sizeable percentage of accidents and there are conclu­sive proofs that, under its influence the chances of committing crimes, including murder, rape, and suicide increase manifold. But again, the alcohol industry has advanced the same outlandish logics to keep their business intact as have the tobacco manu­facturers. In addition, there have also been brazen attempts to increase social acceptability of liquor by stating that it is useful for cardiovascular health. Yet another logic advanced by the alcohol lobbyists is that if prohibition is enforced, house-made cheap liquor would become common signalling threat to the lives of consumers. Thus, while the media hardly if ever gives coverage to alcohol-linked deaths, crimes, accidents and suicides, as soon as sales of liquor are banned in some part of the world, it starts carrying out news about marketing of illicit liquor and the deaths caused by it. The alcohol indus­try and its protagonists, like the cigarette industry, have also played the card of loss of revenue to the government. Their claim that prohibition would cause huge economic loss has little sub­stance. It superficially looks well founded because many important points are advertently ignored. Distinction has to be made between national loss and governmental loss. In the case of prohibition, there is no national loss, as the money of the people that used to be spent in buying the bottles is now saved. The money remains within the country and its reallocation takes place. A substantial part of it would go to the banks that are mostly nationalised. The rest would be spent in purchasing other items like fruits, milk, ice-creams, cold drinks, clothes and other consumer items. Fur­thermore, money will not go out of the country in exchange of foreign-made liquor. The government would not only benefit from the money deposited in the banks but will also receive sales tax and excise duties from several items purchased by the money saved. Thus it would improve the health and socioeconomic status of the common people and the loss of revenue to the government would be much less than what is projected. The government will also save money it spends on the hospitals dealing with the patients of alcoholism. The accidents and crimes would witness substantial decline. One of the major advantages of course is that the family lives of those who used to drink would immensely improve; their women and children will be the greatest beneficiaries. The ban in fact will not lead to any loss to the nation. On the contrary, production would improve. The marginal employment generated as a result of the closure of alcohol industry would in due course of time be plugged. Whatever little loss the government might face can be compensated through alternative routes of revenue generation. It must be accepted that huge losses to nation cannot be allowed to occur for providing a few coins to the government. Furthermore, public health and social order are too important to be side-lined for pure economic consid­erations.

  The economic fundamentalists have also realised that a number of social organisations have been playing a significant role in mobi­lising the people against their exploitative practices. Most of these organisations have either leftist inclinations or are motivated by ethical and religious sentiments. They understand the truth that there are always some people in society who derive immense spiritual pleasure in working for the welfare of people. No amount of efforts can completely materialise the thinking of all the inhabitants of the earth. For example, the environmentalists all over the world have shown great dedication and have been successful in pressurising the parliaments and assemblies to enact laws for safeguarding the environment. In recent times, even environmental issues seem to have been hijacked by the big business to asphyxiate small scale industries. Similarly, the labour unions and the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have many a time succeeded in mobilising labourers and common people against the interests of the big business. The mill-owners use certain, overt or covert, methods to weaken the labour unions. Threats and allurements have been used to sow seeds of discord among the leaders of the unions. In countries like the US, the promulgation of the right to work has also been misused for distancing the workers from the labour unions. As the activities of the NGOs in the past have mostly been detrimental to their interests, the economic fundamentalists have recently discovered a highly effective method to put brakes on the NGOs. They know that the NGOs are most of the time in want of money and many social activists have political and financial motives. If these organisations are offered money for continuation of their activities, most of them would not be able to resist the temptation. It will then not be difficult to engage them in activities that are ostensibly humanistic but have hidden advantages for the “growth” of economy. This new concept of involving the NGOs gained momentum in the late 1980s and 90s and a large number of socioeconomic programmes (of course of the choice of the big business) are now being implemented through them. These include population control, literacy, vaccination,. AIDS control, child labour and other social awareness programmes. Obviously, almost all these programmes are in tune with the point of view of the economic fundamentalists. The social activists are now increasingly involved in campaigns planned either by the gov­ernment or other funds-giving agencies most of which are funded by the international institutions. They are now least interested in highlighting the real problems faced by society and are busy motivating the people in accordance with the borrowed plans. Many of them, for example, are intensively campaigning to mobilise public opinion in favour of legalising prostitution. The funny argument being advanced with ever-increasing intensity is that as it is not practical to ban “the oldest profession” it would be far more advantageous to give legal sanction to it. Once “sex-workers” are licensed, it would be easy to get them medical­ly examined at periodic in
tervals. It would reduce the chances of their acting as pools of sex-transmitted diseases including AIDS. The arguments are in fact manufactured to suit the interests of businessmen. Often, mutually contradictory arguments are produced to prove the indispensability of a specific action. For example, in the case of polygamy, it was never said that, as promiscuity was impossible to contain, polygamy should better be made legally permissible. Likewise, the question of practical difficulties has never stood in the way of population control programmes. Similar­ly, the practical problems in the use of condoms have never been questioned. This has also not occurred to them that licensing the prostitutes is even more difficult; bogus licensing would soon emerge. Furthermore, the number of “sex-workers” is so big -- usually in millions -- that it is almost impossible to examine them at short intervals and the cost will be very high. Even if they are regularly examined say at an interval of 3 months, the examination cannot