A Problem Of Purity

The recent raids against milk chilling units in Madhya Pradesh show that food adulteration is a clear and present danger

- Rahul Noronha

In the last week of July, Special Task Force (STF) sleuths disguised as doodhias (a colloquial term for milkmen) began surveiling the Van Khandeshwari milk chilling plant at Ambah, in Morena, Madhya Pradesh. They had received credible intelligence that the sale of spurious milk in the area had spiked, likely due to the festive season, when demand surges. And when they compared the amount of raw milk being delivered to Van Khandeshwari to the amount leaving it, a huge mismatch had been revealed.

Despite expecting to find adulteration taking place, when cops raided the plant two days later, the scale of the operation they found was stunning. The plant was stocked with hundreds of kilos of chemicals, oils and detergents. Thousands of litres of ‘synthetic milk’ were being produced and sent on to packaging and distribution units. This packaged ‘milk’ was then being sold all across the region, including in major cities like the national capital, Gurgaon and Noida.

Allegedly, what the STF found was only the tip of the iceberg. Sources say that both chemical suppliers and local officials are part of the larger racket. Since the state’s Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) officials generally spend years posted to the same region, some say that unhealthily cosy relationships have developed between dairy units and the authorities responsible for overseeing them. What is also telling is that those in the Gwalior-Chambal region who can afford to do so generally keep their own cattle for milk—locals are undoubtedly all too aware of the scale of the racket.