The recent tragedy, in which some 25 children died after eating pesticide-laced mid-day meal in school in Saran, Bihar, is being seen as a wake up call to ensure safe manufacture, storage, distribution and use of pesticides.
Still awaiting Parliamentary approval is the Pesticide Management Bill of 2008, which is meant to replace the Insecticides Act, 1968. The agriculture ministry regulates the manufacture, sale, transport, distribution, export, import and use of pesticides under the 1968 law. Besides, broadly speaking, the Central Insecticides Board advises the central and state governments on technical matters. Regulations are implemented largely by state governments.
Approval for the use of
pesticides and new formulations on crops is given by the Registration Committee of the Central Insecticide Board. The health and family welfare ministry monitors and regulates pesticide levels in food, and sets limits for residues in food commodities.
Some regulators say there are good structures in place for pesticide regulation, and add that their effectiveness varies from state to state because much of the enforcement is left to state governments. Many manufacturers differ, saying that current structures breed corruption and encourage the 'inspector raj'.
Many activists and not-for-profit organisations say there is a lack of
effective structures in place. "What the country needs is a well-coordinated policy, which is implemented in a transparent fashion," says R.D. Shroff, Chairman of Crop Care Federation of India, a not-for-profit body that has pesticide makers as its members. Shroff is also Chairman of United Phosphorus. He says that at present, there are many rules and some "ad-hocism in the way they are brought about and implemented, leading sometimes to corruption." One solution to this is for Parliament to pass the Pesticide Management Bill, but here again, he says, "while lot of efforts went this it seems to have now gone into cold storage."
D. Narasimha Reddy, convener of the Pesticides Action Network India, a voluntary coalition that monitors the impact of pesticides on people and the environment, says: "We need to do more research on permissible residue levels, and these should be based on the Indian system of food intake, which has lots of regional variation and is unlike western food habits."
Dunu Roy, Director of the Hazards Centre, an NGO that helps organisations identify, understand and combat hazards, says that today "the maximum residue levels for insecticides in India are between five to 150 times higher than those set in the European Union, making food more dangerous."
He adds that food safety officials are supposed to inspect manufacturers' premises at least twice a year, and dealers' premises three times annually. They are also supposed to inspect all food retail outlets. Each district is supposed to have one Food Inspector and four Food Safety Officers, which adds up to over 3,000 sanctioned posts in India. Of these, he says, one-fourth is lying vacant. He adds: "Compare this to almost 8,000 inspectors in the US, which has one-fourth our population."
How adequate is India's infrastructure of 46 quality control laboratories for pesticides, which can analyse some 60,000 samples a year? Roy says: "This means each laboratory cannot analyse more than 15 samples a day. In contrast, the state of California, with three per cent of India's population, alone daily analyses 70 samples at a single laboratory and results are available within 24 hours. India's national scheme for monitoring pesticide residues has seen its budget drop from Rs 11.7 crore in 2007/08 to Rs 4.5 crore in 2011/12."
"Every state has a system for enforcement of food safety laws," says K. Chandramouli, Chairperson, Foods Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). "Earlier, we had the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act. Now that has been replaced by the Food Safety Act, and its enforcement is being handled by the state governments." The FSSAI issues advisories, frames laws, and provides training.
Food safety officials in the states are empowered to take action including filing of prosecution cases. Currently, Chandramouli says, there are around 3,500 food safety officers in the country.
Reddy of Pesticide Action Network, however, says that despite existing systems and rules, regulation of pesticides remains somewhat ineffective. "Unfortunately, even the Pesticides Management Bill in its current form does not address some issues. There is for instance, the need for 'lifecycle liability and traceability' of the producer and distribution network." He says he hopes that in the light of the Bihar tragedy, Parliament will take note of this issue when debating the Bill.
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