Perks for Indian corporate wives

A company in India has been celebrating the success of a novel scheme in which the wives of workers are given cash incentives to control their husbands' smoking and drinking.

In what he considered to be a very astute move, the boss of the chemical company in Andhra Pradesh decided to give workers' wives a five-dollar monthly allowance if their husbands stayed off cigarettes, and a further five dollars if they also kept away from alchohol.

The outcome - 99% percent of the 1,200 employees stick to the strict regime.

The company's boss came up with the idea after two close friends died, one from lung cancer, the other from alcohol abuse.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service