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By Anandini Gupta and A. L. Gayathri
According to the World Health Organization, unsafe food causes 100,000+ deaths annually in India (WHO Food Safety, 2024). India faces a persistent food safety challenge, from expired ingredients, contaminated milk, and adulterated spices to unhygienic cooking conditions, and substandard practices in cloud kitchens which continue to pose health risks. Shri Prataprao Jadhav, Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, revealed that in 2023 alone, nearly 20% of food samples across the country were found to be adulterated.
India’s food safety architecture appears comprehensive—but enforcement remains its biggest challenge. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) lays down detailed norms and regulations for food handling, hygiene, labeling, and quality control. Yet, practical enforcement of these guidelines and regulations has been a struggle, with the changing dynamics of food production and consumption outpacing regulatory implementation.
While the FSSAI formulates food regulation nationally, focused governance and monitoring from a central level is not feasible. Consequently, the responsibility for implementing safety standards falls on the state governments and the local authorities, who are often ill-equipped to do so.
Most local bodies operate with a severe shortage of food safety officers, outdated inspection tools, and a limited number of food testing labs. As of 2023, there were only 500 food safety officers for over 130 crore people which translates to 1 officer per 2.6 million (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 2023). As a result, enforcement tends to be reactive rather than preventive with violations coming into light only after incidents or complaints. For effective execution, it is imperative to empower the state and local governments with enhanced capacity, staffing, infrastructure, training authority, and larger devolution of budgetary allocations.
State food safety departments and municipal bodies are closer to the ground realities and better equipped to understand the regional practicalities, practices, challenges, risk areas, and patterns of local food landscapes. This holds especially true considering the vastness of India’s cultural diversity and culinary landscape where food habits, norms, and consumption patterns vary significantly for each state. This in turn leads to unique safety and hygiene challenges in each that national regulations often fail to anticipate or address.
The mismatch between central rule-making and local realities has created regulatory blind spots. Current regulations offer little room for state-specific adaptation. Empowering states with greater autonomy to enhance, adapt, and enforce food safety regulations is crucial to ensure healthier, locally responsive food systems. Beyond implementation authority, devolution of regulatory authority is a need of the hour.
A common counterargument is that decentralised rules could create regulatory fragmentation, complicating compliance for food businesses operating across state lines. This could pose severe operational and compliance changes for businesses present across states and for larger chains and aggregators. However, empowerment of local bodies need not imply a lack of uniformity. Rather, it is advocacy for tiered frameworks wherein the FSSAI standards serve as a regulatory floor for basic hygiene, safety, and labeling requirements. States can build upon this with context-specific additions. This gives the union the role of a facilitator and harmoniser rather than a gatekeeper.
An example of the potential of localised governance is Kerala’s notable progress in strengthening food hygiene through its publicly available hygiene rating for eateries and “Safe Kitchens” campaign aimed at modernising kitchens. This led to a 65% improvement in food hygiene standards within a year. Community Food Monitoring Committees supporting regulatory enforcement in informal setups enhanced public trust in food safety in addition to drastically bringing down cases of food poisoning (RTI by Commissionerate of Food Safety, Kerala, 2023).
On the other hand, Punjab adopted Mobile Food Testing Laboratories (MFTLs) to decentralise and speed up food safety inspections in rural and semi-urban areas. Testing and sharing results on the spot allowed for real-time action and public accountability of businesses. Compliance to regulatory standards improved by 12% and adulteration in milk and ghee reduced drastically (Report on Informal Food Safety, OR, 2018). These instances go on to show how understanding local nuances coupled with regulatory creativity can outperform centralised measures in achieving goals.
Devolving regulatory authority also improves accessibility—for consumers seeking redress and vendors seeking compliance. Although food inspection, licensing, and grievance redressal are state functions, the absence of rule-making autonomy limits actions that state authorities can take. Local governments are more accessible to consumers and vendors and therefore can create faster grievance redressal mechanisms, and awareness drives tailored to local cultures.
Local food businesses, especially street vendors, and small-scale enterprises within the informal sector, struggle with maneuvering around compliance frameworks. Many of them do not have formal licenses because centralised processes are too complex or inaccessible. Localised systems can ease compliance while ensuring safety. It will ensure more visibility and clarity about the relevant body to approach in case of queries or difficulties.
Ultimately, bridging the gap between national standards and local enforcement is essential to making safe food a reality. Achieving this requires decentralising authority, greater regulatory freedom, and strengthening the capacities of state and local governments. Union governments could maintain oversight and streamline the landscape through measures such as linking fund devolution to demonstrated performance in achieving food safety outcomes and developing platforms online which align cross-border rules for easier compliance and supply chain management. Safe food is not a privilege. It is a right. And rights are best protected not from above, but from beside—through empowered local systems that understand what is on every plate.
Anandini Gupta is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Development Policy and Practice (CDPP), with work experience in finance and communications. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Math/Financial Analysis and Risk Management from the University of Waterloo, Canada. On the other hand, A. L. Gayathri is a research intern at CDPP. She has a Master’s Degree in Political Science from Osmania University. Her research interests include gender studies, social exclusion, education, and public health.
This post was last modified on July 2, 2025 9:53 pm