The ghost of Gandhi and the symbolism of salt hover over this debate. In 1930, Gandhi led a march to the sea to protest a tax on salt levied by India s British rulers. It s now being used as a medium of exploitation. Unicef and the World Health Organ- ization have spearheaded global efforts to iodize salt as the simplest and most effective way to make up for iodine deficiencies in an estimated 1 billion people at risk worldwide. Although all but three Indian states have banned the sale of noniodized salt, iodized salt is still not universally available.
Salt is iodized by adding the chemical potassium iodate to it.
India s salt commissioner, R. Prakash, said iodization adds only a small fraction of a penny to the cost of a pound of salt. Two years ago, the central government imposed a national ban on the sale of non- iodized salt, extending it to all the states. But India s health minister, C.P. Thakur, who is a medical doctor and an impassioned advocate of iodized salt, said opponents of the ban convinced the government that the ban on the sale of common salt was a little coercive. The prime minister s spokesman, H.K. Dua, declined to comment on the reasons that Mr. Vajpayee agreed to lift the ban, saying only, The government s decision is also his decision. In India, where most salt is sold loose out of gunny sacks, if you have both iodized and noniodized salt, people will never know which is which and we will slip back, said N. Kochupillai, who is the chairman of the de- partment of endocrinology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.