Smoking in India, sometimes seen as a mark of rebellion against overbearing parents, is rising at an alarming rate in India, along with smoking-related deaths, the Washington Post reported Feb. 21.

Cigarette companies in India have made young women a key target for marketing, and half of the nation's 120 million smokers are under age 20. The country has the world's second-largest population of smokers after China, and researchers have found that less than 2 percent of smokers in India quit.

More than half of smoking deaths in India are among poor and illiterate people, according to research published in the New England Journal of Medicine who found alarming rates of smoking-related illness despite the fact that Indians tend to start smoking later and smoke fewer cigarettes per person than Westerners.

The report prompted calls for more aggressive tobacco-education and prevention programs from the Indian government. Activists are calling for higher cigarette taxes to discourage consumption, and Indian Health Minister Abumani Ramadoss has urged Bollywood filmmakers not to include smoking scenes in their movies.

"India should be very, very concerned about 14-year-olds now starting to smoke," said Ramadoss. "We have data which show that 52 percent of children have their first puff of a cigarette because of movie celebrities."