How options trading became India's new smoking habit in derivatives boom

As smoking lost its cinematic allure, options trading too must be deglamourised through taxation, regulation and cultural signalling to curb risky "get rich quick" behaviour

One of my enduring memories from Hindi cinema is Dev Anand, the epitome of the romantic hero, playing a carefree army officer and lip-syncing to Mohammed Rafi’s “Har fikr ko dhuen mein udaata chala gaya”. What lingers is not just his charisma, Rafi’s silken voice, or Sahir’s words, but the cigarette dangling from his fingers, smoke curling lazily into the air. The masculinity and romance of that moment were inseparable from smoking. This was the 1960s, long before “Smoking Kills” warnings made their way into cinema. 

Six decades later, the imagery around smoking could not be