Just-in-time drift
For ITC, starting to do good for society couldn't have come at a better time. Much of it coincided with the government's clamping down on tobacco products and anti-smoking legislation being passed.
ITC ran the risk of being saddled with a primary business that could only gain stronger pejorative shades: cigarettes.
The anti-tobacco lobby, often training its guns on the cigarette industry, was backed by the government when it amended the Cable TV Act in 1995, culminating in the ministry of information and broadcasting banning cigarette advertisements in 2000. Even surrogate advertising was banned in 2002.
The company, of course, could still have done without advertisements, backed as it was with nearly a decade-old legacy and a distribution reach few Indian companies could boast of.
But the clampdown has seeped into the government's taxation patterns as well, and ITC, like its peers, felt the heat.
Image: Indian children wearing masks take part in an anti-tobacco rally. | Photograph: Deshakalyan Chowdhury/AFP/Getty Images
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