Vardhan for alternatives to tobacco cultivation

Government today debunked the notion that a decline in smoking would affect tobacco growers and pressed upon exploring other viable alternatives to tobacco cultivation.
"It is a myth that farmers in tobacco growing regions would be impoverished if the government succeeds in getting people off the smoking habit.
"Rather, we have evidence that they would earn better incomes and free themselves from the clutches of money lenders," the Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said in a statement today.
There are pilot projects which have been carried out on alternative cropping systems to tobacco which the Health Ministry is willing to share with.

"It will be proved that farmers will get better incomes from cultivating sugarcane, a variety of vegetables, pepper, fruits, mustard, etc. On the lands presently taken up by tobacco," Vardhan said.
Accusing the tobacco companies of unscrupulous practices to woo farmers, Vardhan said these companies give lucrative terms to farmers in some regions, even full advances against estimated crop production, to ensure they do not look to alternatives.
"I will take up this issue at the Central Council of Health for persuading state health ministers to counter this practice," he said.
Referring to the 2014 budget which proposed to raise the excise duty (from 11 to 72 percent for cigarettes, from 12 to 16 percent for pan masala, from 50 to 55 percent on gutka and from 60 to 70 percent on chewing tobacco on tobacco products) Vardhan feels this would lead to more than 3 million Indians, most of them young, to quit the dangerous habit.