The ban on smoking in public places might have drawn a lot of flak from youth who saw it as an unnecessary infringement on their fun. But, for a group of students from the SIES College of Management in Nerul, this law not only seemed necessary but was also laudable, so much so that they decided to come out in support of it. Thus was born Pratigya, a movement to highlight the importance of this law, using street plays and a unique “mask-a-thon” on Sunday

The idea for Pratigya came to Dean (Human Resources) Nitin Vazirani and two of his students Akshit Gupta and Sriram Shankararaman while they were having coffee and noticed that everybody else in the shop was smoking despite the ban. “At first I didn’t know about the ban but then I read the notice that had been put up in the restaurant. I was quite surprised that people were not paying any attention to it,” said Vazirani. “Sriram and Akshit then came up with the idea that maybe the public needs to be educated about this ban, after which we started brainstorming,” added Vazirani.

In the process, Sriram and Akshit went to the health ministry’s website and saw that there were 24 categories of places that were included in the ban that were known as “public places”. “We were sure that most people were not aware what these places were so we decided to put up street plays in 20 such places in Mumbai to raise awareness, not only about following the law but also about the dangers of smoking in general,” said Akshit. The plays were performed as planned between December 27 and 29. At each and every place where the plays were performed, the students distributed pamphlets for what was then only a walkathon that was planned for January 11.

“I was really surprised by the response that we got even at this early stage. Even youngsters came up to us and said that this is a good law as ever since it has been passed they have had to cut down on smoking. I think this is a very positive effect of the ban,” said Akshit.

After discussing liaisons with several non-governmental organisations and even the Art of Living Foundation, not wanting their campaign to lack anything, the students then met former Minister for Health Vimal Mundada and then chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. “They were very excited about the event as they were tired of hearing people say that there were more important things for the government to do than ban smoking in public places. Mundada told us that if we kept calling issues trivial, then nothing would get done,” said Akshit.

So when Pratigya took off, it had the blessings of the state Health Department and the State Food Processing Department.

But this was not enough.

Akshit, Sriram and their team wanted to have something unique for the final walkathon. “Then one day we met one of our alumni members, Manish Motian, who has a company called Thought Bubble and is in the advertising industry. He came up with the idea of a mask-a-thon where we would walk for four kilometres wearing masks as if we are trying to protect ourselves from the second-hand smoke of public smokers. The message was that if public smoking doesn’t stop than we will have to wear these masks everywhere,” said Vazirani.