Moa Jamir
Last week, the State’s citizens were greeted with a positive-sounding headline on various media outlets that Nagaland was ranked sixth in the latest State Food Safety Index (SFSI) 2020-21 released by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).
The reports were factually correct. However, as the popular idiom goes, ‘The devil is in the details,’ and the fine print might not be as rosy as the headline suggested. The concerned authorities should take note of some vital but concerning outcomes regarding the performance of Nagaland. But more on that later.
At the outset, it is pertinent to delineate the index. The SFSI was developed by FSSAI to measure the food safety in the States and Union Territories (UTs) under five parameters.
The first is 'Human Resources and Institutional Data,' which among others, measures the availability of human resources like the number of Food Safety Officers, Designated Officers, and facility of adjudications to ensure food safety.
One of the most important parameters is ‘Compliance’ evaluating the overall coverage of food businesses in licensing and registration, inspections carried out for high-risk food businesses, mode of inspections, number of samples lifted for testing, promptness in attending to the consumer grievances etc.
‘Food Testing - Infrastructure and Surveillance,’ the third parameter, gauges the availability of adequate testing infrastructure with trained workforce for testing food samples while the fourth focuses on ‘Training and Capacity Building’ of regulatory staff and laboratory personnel.
The fifth parameter – ‘Consumer Empowerment,’ looks at the performance of States/ UTs in various consumer empowering initiatives of FSSAI like participation in Food Fortification, Eat Right Campus, Hygiene Rating of Restaurants, RUCO (Repurpose Used Cooking Oil), Clean Street Food Hubs, etc.
Going back to Nagaland’s performance in the 2020-21 Index, the first concern is the ranking itself, specifically, the number of ‘competitors.’ Accordingly, while Nagaland was ranked ‘sixth,’ it was in the grouping of 8 smaller states; ergo, a not so rosy third from the bottom.
The conclusion is arbitrary, many would argue. To justify, it is helpful to look at the overall score. With a total of 38 points, Nagaland’s score was just above Andhra Pradesh (36) and Bihar (35) in the grouping of 20 larger States. Thus, the State would have been in the lower segment if there was a collective ranking.
More importantly, instead of increasing, the score represents a decline from the State’s performance in the first-two index: 42 in 2019-20 and 39 in 2018-19.
Looking at the parameter-wise performance, while the State scored low across the board, the lowest was in ‘Training and Capacity Building’ (3) and ‘Consumer Empowerment (7). In terms of Compliance, the highest-scoring parameters, Nagaland got 12 points, which was one of the lowest among all the States.
The citizens of the State consider themselves to be highly proactive and sensitive about the safety of what they grow and eat, but the data suggests otherwise. The concerned authority should take note of the outcomes and adopt corrective measures to ensure the provision of ‘safe food’ to the general public at large.
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