Delhi to ban fresh cooked street food

The Supreme Court of India has proposed banning hawkers from cooking their delectable array of famous street food on the pavements of New Delhi as part of plans of beautifying the city.

While finalising the hawking policy for Delhi, the Supreme Court, February 6, has ruled that no cooking is to be allowed on Delhi's roads — a directive that elicited instant and vociferous protests from hawkers, customers and activists alike.

In an effort to try and reduce problems due to unsafe food, the Supreme Court has decided to create 'safe food' zones across seven major cities (Delhi being one of them), part of a three–year plan to improve the quality of street food in the country.

The experiment, which will kick off next month, has already been approved by the Planning Commission with a preliminary funding of about Rs. 5 crore (US$ 1.1 million) per city.

The goal is that by 2010, there will be at least three such safe food zones in each of the targeted cities—New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Agra, Mumbai and Jaipur.

Around 500 vendors in each area will be covered under the programme. "Nearly everyone in India has had food on the go because it is tasty, inexpensive and nutritious. We are trying to improve the quality of these meals by setting informal standards. Hawkers face extensive policing in India but still do not meet the minimum health standards," said PI Suvarthan, secretary, Ministry of Food Processing Industries.

It is unclear how the project will address the lack of clean water or garbage disposal but the Ministry is using non–government agencies Sulabh and VOICE as well as the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to help with the project.

The inspiration partly comes from Lahore's popular Food Street near Gawalmandi that was established in 2000, and the ubiquitous hot dog and pretzel stands in Manhattan, New York.

The principle idea behind the project is to try and improve standards without government interference while the private sector, especially branded products companies, will fund the effort in return for placing their ads on the newly designed push–carts. CII says it has a new design in place that should not cost more than what current carts cost to manufacture. It has begun approaching companies such as Nestle, ITC, Tata and Hindustan Lever to sponsor the new carts, in return for prominent display of their product advertising.

The modular cart is designed for vendors to add on specific components—for dry food, for cooking or just for fruit juices without having to replace the entire cart, thus helping keep the costs low, said Savita Nagpal, who heads CII's manufacturing sector unit.

The move towards informal standardisation of street food follows a Parliamentary Committee's decision that the new laws for food safety should not increase policing of street–food vendors.

The Ministry has now concluded that with thousands of hawker families living just above poverty levels, trying to regulate their sales through more government regulation is unlikely to work.

"The government will only part–fund the effort and will not appoint additional quality inspectors. Instead, NGOs will monitor the health and standard of vendors, using committees that will include food consumers," Suvarthan insisted.

The government has also decided to create a new certification mechanism that will give on–the–spot accreditation to vendors, based on standards informally approved by the Quality Council of India, an autonomous body.

Instead of one of the 6,000 government food inspectors in the country and the16 major laws affecting the sector directly or indirectly, a group of four people, including representatives from NGOs and consumers will have the final word on food safety when it comes to these zones.

Though the proposed ban threatens the culinary traditions which form a quintessential part of the Indian experience, a court official has clarified that it was only a proposal and a final decision had not yet been made.

As part of the authorities' effort to transform Delhi into what they call a modern, world–class city, the proposed ban would confine food vendors to small, regulated pockets of the city, allowing them to sell only cold, packaged or processed food they have prepared at home, he said.

Critics have claimed that New Delhi's policemen would be reluctant to enforce such a ban as extracting bribes from street vendors is seen as a job perk.

"This is pathetic and simply shows the disconnect between the people of India and those who govern them. The judges don't have a clue. I challenge the government to implement such an order. Freshly cooked meal is nutritious and least contaminated. Having banned that, the court is simply asking the millions of lower income group and middle class people who thrive on street food to eat contaminated, cold and pre–cooked food," the Times of India quoted activist Madhu Kishwar who heads the NGO Manushi, as saying.

The order, she pointed out, would, more than anything else serve to increase manifold, the existing bribery "rates." Even now, she says, "Food vendors pay thrice the bribe that other hawkers pay to MCD and police officers in the name of hygiene checks. This will just make it worse."

According to the plan, three lakh squatting/hawking spaces will soon be allotted by MCD and NDMC. These will be the only places from where pre–cooked food and other products can be sold.

Other items banned from being traded on the roadside are electronic and foreign goods.

But weekly markets have been allowed to go on. Tuesday's order will have no effect on the functioning of nearly 70 weekly markets, provided they do not operate from no–hawking and no–squatting zones, the court said.

The no–hawking and no–squatting zones have been identified as Lutyens Delhi, Chankyapuri, foreign missions area and Metro stations.