The latest of all self-directed queries posed deep down the psyche for national good has come, if you have taken a notice. A recent US research says that people who smoke every day are 60 per cent less likely to vote than their non-smoking peers. If you are in the habit of smoking, and if you are an eligible voter who has lived past at least a few democratic elections, which include the general, State or civic elections, then you must know about this.
Did you vote last timeIJ How often have you exercised your franchise or for that matter, skipped the same impulsivelyIJ Now is the time for you to realize is that it is the burning stick between your lips, which is secretively de-motivating you in doing your bit to contribute to the strength of the democratic fibres of the nation.
While democracies the world over have been worrying for the not-so-encouraging voters’ turnout, with statistics oscillating between 50 to 70 per cent, not just the general election, but in all types, with the thrust ever been on enrolments, corrections,
purifications of voters’ lists, and finally on awareness, the reason of joy for despots is self-explanatory. In the future, good for now helps me dwell in the realm of science fiction, when democracy is fully evolved in the sense that the last poor is at least well off, the last illiterate is at least literate, the last uninformed is well aware, can the nation still an eye for at least 90 per cent or more voter turnout in an election, if a perfect 100 per cent is an impossibly tall order for whatever reasonsIJ The answer is no.
An alarming size of smoking population-does not matter whether miniscule percentage wise, will always have attitudinal problems, besides the health risk, for electoral participation rendered solely by their smoking habit. Karen Albright, one of the authors of the said research paper, who belongs to the University of Colorado Cancer Centre, says that the marginalisation of smokers in social spheres affect the latter’s interpersonal trust as well. They are the lot who ends up getting involved in fewer organisational activities eventually. Their social withdrawal may extend beyond the interpersonal level to their attitudes towards political systems as well.
Though the study is just a starter of caution, because it has not been so extensively done, less so applicable in the Indian context, but then the stigma factor among the conscious electors may be true in our case. Some 11, 626 people were included in that US telephone survey that queried on the basis of demographic, social and behavioural factors. Expectedly, questions were also asked if the respondent had voted in the last election. Out of the respondents, some 17 per cent were smokers who helped the researchers come to the conclusion that daily smokers were 60 per cent or less likely to go to a polling booth and cast their votes than the non-smoking electors. And the study was based on random digit dialing.
With the renewed debates on the size of cancer warning on cigarette packets peaking up, the worry should also be if the awareness about the latest research could be taken to the doors of the schools and colleges, universities and offices, boardrooms and clubs, film and fashion studios. We usually used to worry about the type of urban electors who would rather reluctantly turn up or would irresponsibly play truant on polling days with their heat and dust alibis etc., or for other reasons such as business meetings, cricket match or more urgent job at hand, which includes lack of interest for not finding a suitable candidate of their choice. Thanks to the ECI, they now have a NOTA-none of the above-choice to exercise. With this nascent, but alarming research on the health risk and attitudinal behaviour change of our smoking population, we have an unacknowledged factor for some people missing out on electoral participation. The need for even a larger cancer warning message on cigarette packets is on the cards like never before. For at least, democracy’s sake.
In a lighter vein, one can say that the possibility of an absolute electoral participation even in a Utopian realm should find itself between the hard rock and the social stigma attached to smoking. Read the Government ban on smoking in public places-the social ostracism of smokers thereof, the official taking of task of bureaucrats and Government servants for smoking in offices, the inability to smoke at home for the love of the health of one’s loved ones. The smokers, according the survey, by inference, though, are having a whole lot of stress. Then the tobacco taxes, rising prices of the smoking sticks are there. Result: depression and withdrawal from institutional participation. What to doIJ Can’t help cancer spread at the cost of the weakening of democracy by non or less participation by smoking electorate.
Perhaps- again in a lighter vein, what may now appear to be a joke may really become a tough advertisement need of the future, if the habit of the smoking people is not contained on time, the cigarette packets may inescapably begin to bear additional signs for the smokers: Be nice to your lungs! The coming election may be your last.
(The author is the District Information and Public Relations Officer, Gajapati. The views expressed are his own.)