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Thank Anbumani Ramadoss? 

Anbumani Ramadoss, former health minister is out in the cold. Unsung! Unlamented! But there are two things for which the maverick minister will long be remembered: the zeal with which he fought the All India Institute of Medical Sciences director Dr P Venugopal and the equal zeal with which he campaigned against tobacco consumption. If the first showed him at his petty best, the second showed a surprisingly public-spirited side that few expect to see in our political class.

While his almost personal vendetta with Venugopal has been forgotten by all save, perhaps, Venugopal and Ramadoss, his other legacy, the battle against tobacco consumption, lives on. “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones”, lamented Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. But for once the bard was wrong! Sometimes the good does live on, as in the case of Ramadoss.

The former minister is far from dead even if both he and his party are on the verge of political extinction. But starting today, coincidentally, ‘World No Tobacco Day’, the fight against smoking has got added ammunition: mandatory pictorial health warnings on cigarette packs. The decision comes after three years of vacillation and more recently, attempts to dilute the warnings, and is a blow to the tobacco lobby. . . .

“My father had been doubtful anyway ... And my mother was too ill with her interminable bronchitis. As I carried old Dr Robinson’s prescription to the chemist the following morning...I vowed I would never smoke.” Hopefully, in time no child will have to choose the hard way like John Major and improbable as it might seem, we have to thank Ramadoss for it!

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