Food fortification requirement to adversely impact small scale food processing units

By Bharat Dogra
Recently some new threats have been emerging for small scale food processing units in India. To give a recent example, this year new directives have been issued for mandatory six-month lab tests for them which can raise their costs and reduce their viability to a significant extent. Food fortification requirements being pushed relentlessly by the authorities in recent times can also have a very adverse impact on small scale food processing units, apart from their other adverse impacts.
A special feature of the freedom movement in India was that it had a very important component of various constructive activities. Among these, promotion of khadi and village/cottage scale industries was a very important component. Within this, small food processing units got a lot of emphasis and Mahatma Gandhi personally advocated these for their potential of providing more healthy and nutritious food to people as well as to farm animals. Now an additional advantage of local, decentralized food processing is that this reduces food miles travelled which is considered very important for environment protection. The concept of increasing village self-reliance, which is integral to the spirit of swadeshi and swaraj, also has increasing importance in the context of more pressing needs of environment protection and climate change mitigation as well as adaptation. Village and cottage units, small-scale food processing units inevitably use less capital intensive technology and are capable of generating much more employment. What is more, India’s villages have possessed rich traditional skills for various kinds of food processing, some of which are still very relevant and others can be changed to suit present needs better while retaining their core benefits of providing better nutrition and health as well as higher and more creative employment and rural entrepreneurship.
Unfortunately, despite all the lip sympathy paid to swadeshi and swaraj, the country has been fast moving in the direction of dominance of food processing by big business and reduced role for cottage and small scale, village-based and decentralized units. This can be seen in almost any rural region of the country. What is most unfortunate is that harmful, even addictive foods promoted by big business are spreading rapidly among children, adolescents and youth, to a lesser extent among others too.
The big business interests have the advantage of their brands being promoted at great expense by powerful, often unethical advertising campaigns, and on top of this they get subsidized in several other ways as well, directly and indirectly, making the best of a system that is increasingly more and more biased, perhaps even rigged, in favor of big business.
It is in this wider perspective that the increasing trend of policy makers using ever changing standards of various kinds to harm small-scale food processing units while making the food sector increasingly more favorable for big business must be seen. This may take the form of arbitrary (and even harmful) fortification norms, or imposing excessive lab testing on small units, increasing such costs beyond their capacity.
In international trade the developed rich countries have been using arbitrary norms of various standards for a long time to harm the interests of the Global South. Developing countries should resist this, but how will they get the moral strength for this if within the country somewhat similar tactics are used to harm the small and cottage scale units. While giving up such harmful policies, the government should adopt policies which help the decentralized, cottage and small-scale food processing units in rural areas and close to them.

---
The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food, Man over Machine and When the Two Streams Met

Comments

India’s climate tech ecosystem in dire need of both early, growth-stage funding: Report

By Our Representative India’s climate tech ecosystem, which boasts over 800 startups, is in dire need of both early and growth-stage funding to leverage its full potential, according to a report by Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (Ventures) and MUFG Bank , Japan. Despite a robust initial funding landscape, with approximately two-thirds of climate tech startups receiving seed capital, growth-stage investments remain critically lacking.

'Flawed' argument: Gandhi had minimal role, naval mutinies alone led to Independence

Counterview Desk Reacting to a Counterview story , "Rewiring history? Bose, not Gandhi, was real Father of Nation: British PM Attlee 'cited'" (January 26, 2016), an avid reader has forwarded reaction in the form of a link , which carries the article "Did Atlee say Gandhi had minimal role in Independence? #FactCheck", published in the site satyagrahis.in. The satyagraha.in article seeks to debunk the view, reported in the Counterview story, taken by retired army officer GD Bakshi in his book, “Bose: An Indian Samurai”, which claims that Gandhiji had a minimal role to play in India's freedom struggle, and that it was Netaji who played the crucial role. We reproduce the satyagraha.in article here. Text: Nowadays it is said by many MK Gandhi critics that Clement Atlee made a statement in which he said Gandhi has ‘minimal’ role in India's independence and gave credit to naval mutinies and with this statement, they concluded the whole freedom struggle.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

A Hindu alternative to Valentine's Day? 'Shiv-Parvati was first love marriage in Universe'

By Rajiv Shah* The other day, I was searching on Google a quote on Maha Shivratri which I wanted to send to someone, a confirmed Shiv Bhakt, quite close to me -- with an underlying message to act positively instead of being negative. On top of the search, I chanced upon an article in, imagine!, a Nashik Corporation site which offered me something very unusual.

UNEP report on how climate crisis is impacting displacement, global conflicts, declining health

By Shankar Sharma* A recent report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), titled "A Global Foresight Report on Planetary Health and Human Wellbeing," warrants urgent attention from our country’s developmental perspective. The findings, detailed in the report, should be a source of significant concern not only globally but especially for our nation, which has a vast population and limited natural resources.

Industries fueling climate crisis draining public funds in Global South: ActionAid

By Our Representative A new ActionAid report has exposed the alarming financial drain on the Global South, as climate-wrecking industries like fossil fuels and industrial agriculture receive over US$600 billion annually in public subsidies. The report, "How the Finance Flows: Corporate Capture of Public Finance Fuelling the Climate Crisis in the Global South", reveals that an average of US$677 billion in public finance is directed toward climate-destructive sectors each year, depriving crucial social sectors such as education.

75 years of revolution: How China moved away from ideals of struggle for human liberation

By Harsh Thakor* On October 1st, we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, a pivotal moment in the struggle for human liberation. From 1949 to 1976, China achieved remarkable social equality and revolutionary democracy, outpacing other developing nations in literacy, health care, agricultural output, and industrial production.

Will Bangladesh go Egypt way, where military ruler is in power for a decade?

By Vijay Prashad* The day after former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina left Dhaka, I was on the phone with a friend who had spent some time on the streets that day. He told me about the atmosphere in Dhaka, how people with little previous political experience had joined in the large protests alongside the students—who seemed to be leading the agitation. I asked him about the political infrastructure of the students and about their political orientation. He said that the protests seemed well-organized and that the students had escalated their demands from an end to certain quotas for government jobs to an end to the government of Sheikh Hasina. Even hours before she left the country, it did not seem that this would be the outcome.

105,000 sign protest petition, allege Nestlé’s 'double standard' over added sugar in baby food

By Kritischer Konsum* 105,000 people have signed a petition calling on Nestlé to stop adding sugar to its baby food products marketed in lower-income countries. It was handed over today at the multinational’s headquarters in Vevey, where the NGOs Public Eye, IBFAN and EKO dumped the symbolic equivalent of 10 million sugar cubes, representing the added sugar consumed each day by babies fed with Cerelac cereals. In Switzerland, such products are sold with no added sugar. The leading baby food corporation must put an end to this harmful double standard.

Search This Blog