Click to play videoNew Delhi:The Union government has decided that cigarette and beedi packs will now carry graphics pictures of the effects of smoking. There had been pressure from the tobacco lobby not to go ahead with the warnings but finally the pressure from NGOs' to implement it prevailed.
The move has seen some success in other countries and in Singapore some of the most gruesome pictorial warnings on cigarette packs include a mouth inflicted with oral cancer, a miscarried baby and gangrene.
It is method followed in many other countries to make smokers kick the butt and is a measure fully supported by Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss.
"I believe it is now time to scare them and say that this is what you will end up as if you smoke," Ramadoss says.
And the Indian government's strategy of fear could be a picture of lungs, possibly an X-ray or a scorpion. A high level Group of Ministers decided the symbols on Tuesday.
The move comes after several rounds of deliberations since 2007, when Ramadoss had virtually admitted to being under pressure from the tobacco lobby not to implement pictorial warnings.
"They feel that the pictorial warning on the beedi packs will kill the industry," Ramadoss had said.
So the smokers in India will now be cautioned by much diluted versions of the horrific warnings planned before.
But are pictorial warnings on cigarette and beedi packets effective in deterring smokers worldwide? Or does India need harsher measures?
"Definitely countries like Canada, Brazil which have set precedent that pictorial health warnings have been effective in reducing tobacco use, the prevalence has come down. People have started quitting," Monika Arora, Director of Hriday-Shaan, an NGO engaged in health awareness, says.
Though India is taking the cue from others countries as far pictorial warnings go, it is also important to recognise that countries like the USA back it up with other policy decisions, like penal duties making cigarettes very expensive and strictly enforcing the ban on smoking in public places.
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