A whole generation was shocked. College students, who live in hostels sighed in despair and housewives moaned in agony. Such were the long lasting results of the sudden ban on the nation’s most popular “pulp” food, “Maggi”. The ban on maggi cannot be only viewed as a simple banning of a food commodity found to be unsatisfactory to the laws and standards but rather, it’s the curtailment, a cruel one at that, of many memorable incidents those have been conjured up on Maggi and with magi by many.
Right from the day Maggi was introduced in the Indian market in the 80s, it had a huge following. Nestle India had one of its main revenue earners in the instant noodle franchise. Over the years, Maggi had expanded its horizon from noodles to soups and table sauces to masalas, but the chord that had been struck by the two minute noodles could not be equalled by any of the subsequent commodities. The advertisements running on the television popularised by famed and acclaimed individuals starting from Amitabh Bachchan to Madhuri Dixit added the spice to the product. The impact of Maggi on the Indian society was so hard that even Virender Sehwag’s bad form was once tagged up directly with Maggi on social media stating that Sehwag used to put Maggi on cooking in the pavilion and then come on to bat, and hence the quick return as Maggi gets cooked in just two minutes, and he just could not help waiting more to eat it. Maggi, once the evening snack for the elite, with their intelligent market stunts, has penetrated every household in the country, widening the population it affects with its product.
The ban on Maggi has hurt many, and they are now celebrating Bombay’s High Court decision to lift the ban. A certain section has expressed deep apathy at the ban while the others have maintained that every packet food has some harmful ingredient added to it so the fuss created for Maggi is unjust to the product. But nobody can deny the 17.2 Parts per million lead found in the product which is 17 times more than the permitted level. Nobody can refuse the extra added MSG in Maggi, which is above the medically approved limit and can cause severe health fatalities. It was the effort of a serious and honest FCCAI worker that such shocking facts have come to light regarding the nation’s premier noodle company, which subsequently got banned in UP followed by states like Jharkhand and finally all over the country. The collective losses to be borne by the company have already crossed many billions.
The same Nestle Company which makes tall heaps regarding the health benefits of its products has been making unnecessary and useless technical excuses during the whole controversy. In a statement the Maggi officials said that since the product had two parts, the noodle and the tastemaker, it should have been treated as a combined product and not individually, that is the form in which it is usually consumed. Nestle also issued a statement saying that the MSG was present in it all the time, and that the only guarantee they gave in the packets was that there was no extra added MSG in the product.
The company which has revolutionary products like Nescafe and Milky bar to its name has been behaving like a thief trapped in between the masses and the police. And such behaviour has hurt the sentiments of millions who took Maggi not only as a food to be consumed but as their only friend during many late night study sessions and office hours. That Maggi had become a cult food in India added to the height to which the whole issue has escalated. In spite of the fact that Bombay High Court has lifted the ban lately, the doubts hovering over the quality of the product cannot be undermined.
This incident has brought about major issues in the Food Safety and Standards Act and the regulating body of the act, the FCCAI. The FCCAI, established in 2011, the prime body in maintaining the standard of packet foods in the country has been dilapidated with poor funding, low budget infrastructure and non co-operation from the state governments who play a primordial role in the application of the FSS act enacted in 2006. The FCCAI has been allocated just 56 crore for surveying and maintaining an industry whose worth is estimated to be over 13 billion dollars. And with the government’s free and unrestricted license to the MNCs to market and produce goods following the neo liberal economic reforms of the 1990s, the FCCAI, which was established for monitoring the commodities, has turned out to be nothing more than an approval body. Today, we can find innumerable products, being sold with the FCCAI mark, without even getting tested by the FCCAI. The FCCAI officials have been voicing their protest against the allegation against their inefficiency saying that with the low budgetary allocation, it is impossible to test and survey the ever increasing products entering the market.
The officials have been found saying that almost the entire allocated amount goes into the salaries and maintenance. The government’s encouragement of the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) since the 90s has resulted in the reduction of excise duties on many food processing and packaging industries from 10 to 6 percent.
The growing Indian market is no doubt been seen as a golden goose by the manufacturers and hence the food industry has been turned into a profit making industry and it is neither astonishing nor very lame to expect such heath issues to be bypassed by the manufacturers , whose only intention is to squeeze out the money from the market. The need for a proper regulatory body has become one of the major requirements for the society.
It is not only the FCCAI which has faced the wrath of the public but also the ASCI, the Advertisements Standards Council of India, a self regulatory body which believes in making advertisements conforming to one’s social and moral conscience and sets the guidelines for the advertisements, which has been on the receiving end of the mass’s rebuke and rebuttal. The way in which Maggi was publicised featuring many noted personalities portraying the nutritional benefits of the product and totally neglecting the issue of present MSG, flavours and artificial tastemakers in the product have come into the focus. The conscience and awareness of the personalities regarding the product they endorse, has also come into question.
The government needs to take stringent and urgent steps to regulate both the bodies. The excessive stress laid on FMCG, which is in no way justifiable, should not cause health hazard for the masses. That the government is worried about its own pockets is quite evident but the general public can’t be put into the crosshairs for that.
