Indeed, a lot of hard laborers need the addiction to plough through their life. Although one unfortunate aspect of this habit unlike in other countries is the casual disregard for spitting anywhere.

The issue is that India is a highly resource strained country and most internal issues are manifestations of the same fights over limited resources that show up as something else.

Nothing can make poverty (as a national problem) go away overnight. But if a guardian started buying 50 rupees (USD 80 cents) worth of milk/eggs/notebooks/pens instead of cigarette, tobacco and alcohol tomorrow, or just saved that up for later, the quality of life will start rising for sure. That fifty rupees, which is what an average person spends a day, makes a difference.

I think this speaks to the fact that essential items supply/demand is skewed by purchase of cigarettes then? You can't really survive off of cigarettes, I'd imagine.

A lot of it goes into waste also

And nicotine usage is heavily skewered towards people who have had a bad quality of life.

Usually due to financial issues.

It's also surprising that we could've played a better role with tobacco but instead heavily promoted and romanticized it for decades.