Isn’t it time that somebody took the publicity-hungry Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss aside and asked him to sit down and belt up? Almost from the time that he has been sworn in, the man has been a constant embarrassment to the health ministry, the Union Cabinet and India’s liberal society.
Ramadoss’s latest stab at the headlines consists of his demand that Indian film stars should refrain from drinking on screen on the grounds that their example may inspire millions of impressionable Indians to dash out of cinema halls, searching for the nearest bar.
This comment is in keeping with Ramadoss’s record. A few months ago, he asked movie stars to stop advertising potato crisps on the grounds that they were unhealthy. Lest this request be regarded as not newsworthy enough to ensure the headlines and TV coverage that Ramadoss so enjoys, he added a nudge-nudge-wink-wink reference to Saif Ali Khan. A leading movie star who endorsed crisps had suffered a heart attack, he informed us.
And then, of course, there is the smoking controversy. The good doctor first came to national prominence some years ago when he demanded that movie stars be banned from smoking on screen because this set a bad example. Further, he added when television channels telecast old movies in which the smoking scenes had already been shot, channel heads should take care to remove such scenes, continuity and logic be damned.
There is so much wrong with the stands that Ramadoss continues to take that it is hard to know where to begin.
But a good place to start might well be context. Does this man not read books? Does he have no experience of the world outside of Hindi cinema? Why is he so obsessed with movie stars?
Re-reading his statements, you get the sense that his entire grasp of political philosophy has been gleaned from ‘Neeta’s Natter’ and that his notion of widespread reading consists of a few well-worn copies of Stardust. Such is his obsession with the movies that he cannot see beyond the clouds of cigarette smoke that sometimes swirl around Shah Rukh Khan’s face. So well-informed is he about the lives of our film stars that he knows when Saif goes to hospital with an angina problem.
But then, Ramadoss is from Tamil Nadu, where the distinction between cinema and politics is often obscured. So perhaps his Stardust sensibility has its roots in the politics of his home state. And certainly, nobody can deny that young Anbumani, a previously little-known politician, celebrated only for his genetic good fortune (his father is the leader of a small party, an ally of the DMK in Tamil Nadu), has risen to headline-grabbing status on the basis of the pot-shots he has taken at the likes of Shah Rukh and Saif. Smoking onscreen may or may not be bad for movie stars and their audiences but, by God, it’s been good for Ramadoss. It’s turned him into a national figure.