Friday, September 21, 2007

18% of indian women smoke? what are the guys from the american cancer institute smoking?

sep 21, 2007

almost as many women smoke in india as in the us, % wise?

this is downright startling.

unless i am really missing the picture. and maybe 90% of women in the northeast smoke.

perhaps 1% of indian women smoke. i have never seen a single woman smoking in kerala in all my years, in terms of anecdotal evidence. and hardly any non-metro women anywhere in india.

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9833717

yet another instance of silly statistics from the white guys. remember monty python's "ministry of silly walks"? same thing.

6 comments:

karyakarta92 said...

On anecdotal evindence, the only Indian women I've ever seen smoking were christian students from the North East in Bangalore, Delhi.

Actually, I have also seen a couple other non-christian Indian girls smoking; they were friends of the north east christists and just wanted to "fit in" and appear modern like their christist friends.

To be fair, I've never seen any Kerala or Tamil christist woman smoking.

But, why is The Economist misrepresenting facts. Is it a case of shoddy research or deliberately malicious portrayal?
If the latter, what do they hope to accomplish by this?

Advance the cause of interoperability with Indians?

hUmDiNgEr said...

sorry to say this but if you go to cities like Bangalore,mumbai,delhi..you see quite a lot of gals smoking. I am from Andhra and stayed in Bangalore for 6 years...most of the gals I see smoking are either Iyer/Iyengar babes or Brahmin gals from Andhra. I m studying in one of the premier management instis in India and here....atleast 30% of the gals smoke. Yes, I do agree that many Northeast gals do smoke but tams and telugus r not any less..especially those Urabn types.

The statistic is not startling at all...many women in villages smoke a raw version of "cigar". I have seen many coastal andhra women smoking this type of tobacco. It's just that they dont smoke cigarettes.

Unknown said...

Forget urban women, in rural India, lots of men and women chew tobacco and its variants. May be, this kicked up the stats a notch.

Unknown said...

would say some tribal women do somke but some urban girls do somoke now adays especially the type ---liberated womens--- but they ususally stop after marriage..and gettign back to basics..
the stats are definatley out of proportions.........like the AIDS stats sometime back...maybe for NGO to get money and divert to conversion activities.

kautilya said...

Pune is also a hot spot for women smokers. A casual visit to Symbiosis and Cummins college of Engg, Pune will give you an idea.
Cummins is an ALL GIRLS engineering college.

In recent times the late night shifts of call centers has added to women smokers.

sivarevu said...

So what girls smoke not a big deal... if a man can why not woman