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| Enforce anti-adulteration law effectively | | | Compared to other developing and the developed nations the problem of adulteration in food items is quite menacing in India. And interestingly the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which enjoys a special status within the union of India, has become a home for adulterated rice, wheat, atta, edible oil, milk, milk products, spices and medicines.
Invariably spurious medicines, manufactured in various areas outside the state, find way to the markets in Jammu and Kashmir. In fact the problem of adulteration in food and other consumer items is a national phenomenon. People suffer from various physical ailments after consuming adulterated food items. At times several precious lives are lost because of consumption of spurious drugs. What is painful in the way unscrupulous elements have received direct or indirect patronage from the law enforcing agencies for manufacturing spurious life saving drugs. It is mere murder when people, administered life saving injections and given life saving medicines, die like dogs. People buy milk and milk products for toning up their health. And the result is that milk adulterated with detergents cause enough damage to milk consumers.
It has been seen that concerned agencies get active just days before the annual Diwali festival by destroying tonnes of adulterated sweets and other milk products. Various sweets manufacturing units, located at the most unhygienic spots, are raided and adulterated and fly infested tonnes of sweets are destroyed. It has become an annual ritual. Diwali over the anti-adulteration drive too is over. In various areas in the country including Jammu and Srinagar municipal officials launch anti-adulteration drive and destroy cans of milk brought by the vendors from the rural areas to the cities. Such drives are usually cosmetic and are carried out once or twice a year. That is all. Such drives hardly bear any fruit. One is shocked when one becomes aware of the latest practices, including the practice of injecting some medicines, adopted for keeping the vegetables look quite green and vegetables like the bottle gourd or bitter gourd assuming more weight. Equally shocking is the practice of manufacturing spurious and synthetic milk and curds.
Of late people have started bewaring taking bottled mineral water. One cannot but get attracted when hawkers move about on the railway platforms and inside the rail coaches with attractive bottled mineral water after series of raids have detected filling the bottles with untreated and unfilterated drinking water. Gone are other days when people would visit the water driven mills and other factories for grinding fresh spices. People now depend on packed masalas. One does not know whether the packets of garam masalas have cow dung or not.
One is unaware of the extent of horse dung in turmeric and so on. The tragedy is that in India there is an anti-adulteration law which provides life imprisonment for those found guilty of selling adulterated food items, milk, milk products and medicines. It provides for a penalty of Rs.10 lakhs for those involved in manufacturing spurious and adulterated food items.
Unfortunately this law is not being enforced or implemented strictly with the result those who indulge in manufacturing adulterated food items feel no dread. For a change the authorities in India need to learn a lesson or two from the Middle East and the Gulf countries where nobody can dare to manufacture and sell spurious drugs, adulterated food items or indulge in profiteering. In some countries such offences attract flogging to death.
Well India need not copy the system prevalent in the Gulf countries for tackling adulteration and profiteering. Atleast India should enforce the anti-adulteration law effectively.
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