The trial of the “hooch” kingpins, behind the deaths of 103 labourers in Malwani at north-west Mumbai, will drag on for over five years. In the second case, the Bombay High Court has allowed the transnational company, Nestle India, to export its suspected products overseas, probably on the assumption that foreigners are more resistant to lead contamination than Indians.
In the third case, Maharashtra’s Minister for Child and Women Development, Pankaja Munde, has been very vociferous in asserting that she did not bypass e-tender norms and so supplying chikki containing dirt and pebbles to malnourished children was fine. Unless someone files a PIL making her a respondent, her alleged act of causing Rs 206 crore loss to the state exchequer will go unpunished.
India has the sixth largest food and grocery market in the world which is projected to grow by $487 billion by the year 2020. The advertising budget of Nestle India is Rs 445 crore while it spends only Rs 19.5 crore on quality-testing of its food products. In sharp contrast, the Central Government allocates just Rs 56.93 crore to the Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSAI) to run its four laboratories and 82 accredited laboratories in various states, the majority of which do not test contaminated food.
Out of Rs 56.93 crore allocated to the FSSAI, the lion’s share is spent on administration, maintenance and salaries with very little spent on testing food products for contamination. Apart from the accredited laboratories, the FSSAI does not have a network of quality-testing laboratories in India. Monitoring polluted food for contaminants is definitely not a priority with the Narendra Modi government which feels that mortality rates caused by farmers’ suicides and polluted food is a more subtle way of curbing population growth than the Emergency-era forced sterilizations.
This is borne out by the fact that Pepsi and Coca Cola were in the eye of a storm in 2003 when their colas were found to be contaminated with pesticides which went undetected because the FSSAI was set up only in 2011 to prescribe standards for food articles with the result that it was reduced to giving approvals to the laboratories in various states.
As a result, when the test reports for Maggi noodles finally emerged after a year, it was found to contain 17.2 parts per million (ppm) of lead, over seven times higher than the prescribed norm of 2.5 ppm allowed in packaged food. Metallic lead is a poison which can cause brain damage to infants and affect all organs in adults, not just the nervous system, but also the bones and teeth, the kidneys, and the cardiovascular, immune, and reproductive systems, leading to death.
In this respect, the alleged deliberate use of lead in Maggi noodles is not very different from the use of methanol in the illicit liquor or “hooch” used by the kingpins to earn quick money. The methanol supplier, Kishore Patel, would have faced the death penalty in “dry” Gujarat. He is a crorepati with several flats and a farmhouse.
The victims are different but the modus operandi of both Kishore Patel and Nestle India are the same. But Nestle India has already engaged a top PR agency and top lawyers in Mumbai to revamp its image and exploit loopholes in the law. Kishore Patel may not be so lucky.
In the year 2006, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government enacted the Food Safety and Standards Act, a catch-all law which supplanted bits and pieces of legislation such as the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954, the Fruit
Products Order, 1955, the Meat Food Products Order, 1973 and the Milk and Milk Products Order, 1992.
Multiple laws created problems of multiple controls over multiple commodities. But the 2006 Act required food products to voluntarily comply with prescribed standards, which were seen as progressive, because developed countries did the same.
Now, the Maharashtra government is contemplating amending the Maharashtra Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Slumlords, Bootleggers, Drug Offenders and Dangerous Persons Act (MPDA) to eradicate production and sale of ‘hooch’, which should have been done decades ago. The use of the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act against the alleged criminals who sold “hooch” is commendable because liquor is not a food unlike Maggi noodles.
But there are provisions in our antiquated Indian Penal Code such as sections 272 and 273 (life imprisonment) which can still be used against the directors of Nestle India who are responsible for its day-to-day affairs to make them accountable for the harm and suffering caused to millions of infants whose lives will be affected in future due to lead contamination.
And if this is not done, politicians like Pankaja Munde, companies like Nestle India and criminals like Kishore Patel will have the last laugh.
The India ban has thrown the packaged foods business in the country into disarray. Several companies have withdrawn instant noodles from shops, uncertain about regulatory action, while many jittery consumers have stopped buying packaged snacks. This has meant that the sales spurt the category sees during the monsoon season is absent this year, industry executives said. 
