By RJ Whitehead,29-Jan-2013
If there’s one thing India doesn’t need, that’s more bureaucracy.
As the saying goes, the British introduced it, then the Indians perfected it post-Independence.
And even as the country celebrated its sixty-fourth Republic day last week, all the form-filling and paper-pushing–and consequent palm-greasing–have continued unabated well into the twenty-first century.
Rather than them fading out, even more bureaucratic processes are being introduced by the day, and one of the most recent examples of tedious triplicate concerns any new or existing food products that are classed as “proprietary”.
Last month, the Food Safety and Standards Association of India (FSSAI), the government-promoted body that has recently taken over as the country’s food watchdog, announced that it would start a new system of issuing approvals, meaning that any products that are not classified in the Food Act will need to follow a regulatory “new product approval” guideline, as laid down by the FSSAI.
Proprietary foods as a definition doesn’t just cover the latest in pre- and probiotics and newly formulated breakthroughs; no, it deals with items as simple as low-calorie ice-creams, digestive biscuits and low-sugar jams. And it doesn’t matter how thoroughly a company announces its product’s ingredients on packs and in advertising, it will still need to attain FSSAI approvals.
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