Led by Dr. Upendra Bhojani and Adhip Amin from IPH, the India Tobacco Industry Interference Index 2020 report has been produced through a collaborative work of several institutions and individuals active in tobacco control research and practice in India. The report was released in September 2020 at the 5th National Conference on Tobacco or Health (NCTOH)-Virtual. Dr. Upendra Bhojani participated in the conference and was a panelist in a session that focused on Stopping Tobacco Industry Interference. The NCTOH panel talk and release is available here at NCTOH youtube page.

This report is a systematic and collaborative effort at assessing the implementation of the WHO FCTC Article 5.3 in India. The Tobacco Industry Interference Index helps to assess the implementation of the FCTC Article 5.3 through standardized tools using a systematic inquiry and materials in the public domain. Index report and summary are available for download at the India country page on the Global Tobacco Index webportal.

Tobacco industry interference in public policies remains a major concern in India. The overall score for the India 2020 Tobacco Industry Interference Index is 61 out of 100. This suggests a small but definite improvement in implementation of the FCTC Article 5.3 in 2019 compared to the year 2018 (score 69/100) and 2017 (score 72/100). Higher score indicates greater interference.

Ketki Shah received a doctoral fellowship under the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance project led by Dr. Upendra Bhojani. She has registered her PhD in December 2020 at The University of Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology (TDU). At TDU, her PhD is co-supervised by Dr. Prakash BN. Her PhD focuses on understanding from a worker’s perspectives the issues, and experiences with shifting to alternative and safer non-tobacco livelihoods.

Ketki’s PhD is divided into three phases. In the first phase, she plans to do an integrative review to explore and review the initiatives that have been tried out in South and South East Asia. The findings will be used to understand factors that influence transitioning to non-tobacco livelihoods. In the second stage, she aims to map the supply chain of bidi in Gujarat to identify the processes, geographies and workers involved. And finally in the third phase, she plans to conduct a primary qualitative inquiry with former and current bidi workers. This is to understand from their perspectives the dynamics and drivers for transitioning to alternative non-tobacco livelihoods.

She hopes that the evidence generated would inform processes that protect workers (from occupational-hazards and livelihood losses) as the demand and supply for tobacco hopefully reduces with tobacco control measures.

Amiti Varma from the DEEP project presented a paper on “Situating tobacco in health policy: Using parliament as an instrument of accountability” at the 6th Global Symposium on Health Systems Research (8 – 12 November, 2020). She presented findings from an analysis of two decades of tobacco-related questions in Indian parliament. This is part of a broader project (DEEP) that is also looking at parliamentary questions as one of the ways of understanding public policy towards tobacco.