CHENNAI: In its August alert, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) released findings that over 50 highly common pharmaceutical drugs — including paracetamol and anti-reflux pills — were not of standard quality.
The relevant manufacturers have since claimed that they did not produce the substandard drugs and that counterfeit samples were used in the regulatory body’s testing. This news did not emerge until last month, and still has not gained widespread coverage. More importantly, it doesn’t seem to have entered the arena of public protest, enquiry and discussion.
Earlier this year, regulatory bodies in Singapore and Hong Kong discovered carcinogenic ingredients in certain popular Indian spice brands, prompting the Food and Standards Authority of India to instruct state governments to conduct randomised tests in similar products.
While authorities may have taken these concerns seriously, just as with the pharmaceutical situation today, little has changed in terms of public awareness and response.
Issues in the Indian cosmetics and toiletries industries are related to both pharmaceutical and culinary spuriousness, this time without regulation. Among other issues, brands are not required by law to reveal their complete ingredients list, in percentage order. There are no regulatory bodies. Which means: anything goes.
A new generation of Indian brands, imbibing values from abroad, have made it a point to declare more transparency, but whether their claims are legitimate or just as misleading as what both established household names and dubious ones have always done is difficult to prove. All this affects most of us, because even if we don’t paint our eyelids, we do still bathe and brush our teeth.
Curiosity about what we consume and the prioritising of safety and quality don’t seem to come as naturally here as this baseline: that things be inexpensive. If such a sensibility existed, so would a sensitivity about where what we purchase comes from, and where it goes.
Everything from how we regard farmers’ rights and capitalist mechanisms to how we regard waste disposal and the environment would change — for the better.
But these questions are rarely asked, and it is considered a privilege to ask them rather than to prioritise one’s budget above all else. This is an attitude that is proudly considered “middle class” (although many of us who think we middle class are actually higher on the pecking order, statistically speaking).
On the other hand, the rumour that emerged last month that laddoos distributed at the Tirupati temple have been prepared with ghee containing animal fat has seized public attention and become a subject of much discussion. So much so that the Supreme Court of India has chastised the Andhra Pradesh state government for publicising, through the press, a matter that is under investigation.
The matter of Tirupati laddoos may hold great sentimental value to a relative minority, but the problems in the Indian pharmaceutical, food production and beauty industries affect literally the entire Indian population in very practical and harmful ways. We could — we should — all care more deeply about these absolutely quotidian dangers. They are inflicted on us in such a normalised way because we don’t raise enough doubts — or maybe just not enough of the really important ones.