The demonisation of poor street food vendors

Where do you get the best food in India?

It’s not a difficult question to answer. The best food in India has always been on the streets.

 

India’s street food vendors get a really bad deal. They are terrorised by the police. They have to pay off municipal officials from their meagre earnings. And most of them barely eke out a living.

 

   As some of you may know, I am part of an organisation that does a list of India’s top 30 chefs and also rates restaurants. When our awards and ratings are announced at glittering functions they attract enormous attention and confer immense prestige on the winners.

 

   But for me, the skills of the top chefs and the cuisine of the great restaurants fade in comparison to the genius of our street food maestros. Each year my organisation also ties up with the indefatigable Sangeeta Singh of the National Association of Street Vendors (NASVI). Sangeeta organises a street food fair and we get some of India’s best chefs to come there and judge the food made by the vendors who Sangeeta and NASVI have brought in from all over India. Without exception the chefs are bowled over by the excellence of the food and many, like Manish Mehrotra and Ritu Dalmia are inspired to go back and create their own takes on the dishes they have tasted.

 

   When the judging is over Sangeeta and I give awards (including cash rewards) to the men and women who run the best stalls. It is always an incredibly emotional moment for everyone because the vendors have never before been recognised or won any prizes. Many burst into tears and I have been known to brush away tears of my own.

 

   I enjoy the fancy ceremonies where we give awards and stars to India’s top chefs and restaurants. But nothing matches the emotional impact and the joy that our Street Food Awards bring me.

 

   So you will forgive me for the personal tone of outrage that runs through this column. My indignation is ocasioned by news reports that health authorities plan to treat the food made by the street food vendors on par with cigarette smoking. According to the news reports the Health Ministry will put up the sort of signage associated with warnings on cigarettes to deter people from eating Vada Pav or samosas. This project will begin in Nagpur and will then presumably spread to other cities. So the next time you go to eat a Channa Bhatura you may be confronted with a sign that reads ‘Eat Wisely. Your future self will thank you.”

 

   I don’t know who writes this gibberish but I do know who pays for this deathless prose and for the billboards that will be hired all over India.

 

   You do, my dear tax payer. I do. All of us do. These jokers make the decisions. We pay for them.

 

   I don’t have to tell you what the demonisation of poor street food vendors will lead to. They already struggle to survive. Now they will face the opprobrium of being treated on par with people who sell products who give you cancer.

 

   Is street food inherently unhealthy? No, of course it isn’t. If you eat massive quantities of samosas or vada-pav then of course, it won’t be good for you. But who does that? For most of us these are ocassional treats and rare is the person who eats six plates of vada pav at a time. There is no parallel with cigarette smoking where it’s common to smoke six cigarettes a day. And for most smokers, smoking is not an occasional treat. It’s a regular part of their lives.

 

   After a nationwide uproar including a threat by Milind Deora, who chairs a Parliamentary Committee, to inquire into the proposals, the Health Ministry went into damage -control mode. It wasn’t asking for cigarette-style health warnings on packaging, it declared.

 

"It’s much easier to pick on the little guys than on Big Food. What can a poor street vendor do against the might of the state? And there is much to gain by cosying up to Big Food with its billions of dollars."

   Well, of course it wasn’t. No street food guy sells pakoras in ready made packages like cigarette packs. It was the signboards that would end up targeting the vada pav wallas we were objecting to.

 

   And on that, it seemed there was no backing down. These boards would go up anyway (on behalf of our future selves, presumably) though the Ministry added weakly that the intention was not to target ‘India’s rich street food culture.”

 

   All of this drivel about ‘your future self’ is sought to be justified on the grounds that obesity is a major problem in India. And yes, obesity among the middle class is growing. The poor (say labourers and workers) who often eat at these stalls don’t have that problem: it is a middle class issue.

 

   So yes, we must do something to control middle class obesity. But though there is an obvious way ahead, the government will not take it.

 

   As Dr Arun Gupta, a tireless campaigner against Ultra Processed Foods, points out, obesity numbers almost doubled from 2006 to 2019. It is unlikely that our consumption of Pav Bhaji and pakoras doubled during that period. But something else more than doubled.

 

   Our consumption of Ultra Processed Foods (UPF) went up from $ 900 million to an astounding $ 38 billion. Our per capita consumption of these foods went up over 50 times during that period.

 

   That is why obesity is such a problem. It’s not because of food freshly made by small producers. It is because of food made in factories: industrial, chemical-heavy processed food that has now reached every village in India. One instance: factory-made cake is a market that is worth more than a billion dollars a year.

 

   The detrimental effects of UPFs have now been scientifically proven. They have been linked to obesity, dementia and worse.

 

   Multinationals in the West are scaling back on the processes and the sugar. But in India many producers persist with the old chemicals and the old processes. They feed pounds of sugar to young children in the form of breakfast cereals and even, incredibly enough, as ‘health supplements’. When people complain on social media Big Food spends millions trying to shut them up.

 

   So why then are we pretending that samosas and vada pav are the problem?

 

   It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s much easier to pick on the little guys than on Big Food. What can a poor street vendor do against the might of the state? And there is much to gain by cosying up to Big Food with its billions of dollars.

 

   Dr Gupta and various others have advocated better labelling so that people know how many factory-made chemicals are being thrust into their bodies. I have been a moderate on the issue so far but given that the Health Ministry is now going after the samosa wallas, I think the time has come for strict regulation of UPFs. It will make more difference to our health than any signboards with idiotic slogans will. And it will cost the tax payer nothing: Big Food will bear the cost.

 

   Will it happen? I don’t know. Government policy is full of contradictions. On the one hand, young people are encouraged to unleash their entrepreneurial spirits and become pakora sellers.

 

   And on the other, the government spends crores of our money treating these pakora sellers as poisoners who we must shun.

 

   Only Big Food laughs all the way to the bank.