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Inspections of restaurants, street vendors and packaged-food producers have intensified in India in recent weeks. Tukaram Mundhe, commissioner of Maharashtra’s Food and Drug Administration, has gained attention on social media by sharing photographs of kitchens contaminated with cockroaches and rat droppings on warehouse floors.
Since taking office in May, teams led by Mundhe have conducted more than 3,000 raids and suspended the licences of about 165 establishments during the first two months. The 2005-batch Indian Administrative Service officer, dubbed “Singham” by supporters, has been transferred 25 times during his 21-year career.
This year, inspections have targeted Domino’s, Pizza Hut and McDonald’s restaurants, as well as upscale clubs and restaurants in and around Mumbai. In one raid in Uttar Pradesh, inspectors seized 1,300 kilograms of adulterated paneer, a curd-based cheese consumed daily by millions of Indians.
Mundhe has more than 3.7 million followers on Instagram. Bollywood stars, including Salman Khan and Preity Zinta, have publicly supported his work. The commissioner says he is not seeking fame and is simply doing his job.
What do the official figures show?
Indian food inspectors have tested more than 100,000 samples every year since 2020. About one in five of those samples has been classified as unsafe, substandard or improperly labelled. Around 8,000 food businesses have had their licences revoked over the past three years.
Another official indicator, however, presents a more optimistic picture. According to information released by a parliamentary committee in August 2025, only about 2% of establishments failed to meet requirements during inspections carried out over the previous two years to assess hygiene compliance on site.
Lawmakers said that figure did not appear consistent with the scale of India and called for more frequent inspections at establishments previously found to have problems. The gap between the two figures appears to reflect not an improvement in food safety, but differences in the measurement methods used and the timing of inspections.
Long-standing problems in the system
A 2018 parliamentary report said that only 13 of the 62 state food laboratories operating in the country had national accreditation. It also noted that most states lacked dedicated food safety departments and that the regulator did not maintain a unified database of food businesses across the country.
Progress has been uneven in subsequent years. Last year, a parliamentary committee highlighted continued weak coordination between the food regulator and the body overseeing plastic packaging. It said safety standards were still lacking for bowls and spoons intended for ordinary food use.
In June, the head of the regulatory body urged states to fill vacant food safety inspector positions. This underscores that effective oversight depends not only on images circulating on social media, but also on laboratories and adequate staffing.
Debate over warning labels on packaging
Years of debate over placing warning labels on the front of food packaging have also resurfaced. According to a Reuters report published in August, the government softened its position on the issue in March after lobbying by groups supporting Coca-Cola and Nestlé.
The regulator has now proposed a red, hexagonal symbol for products high in at least two of the following: sugar, salt and saturated fat. Food industry representatives say the thresholds are excessively strict and that, under such rules, “everything would appear red.”
Public health campaigners, however, believe the proposal is not strict enough. They argue that a biscuit high in sugar but below the specified thresholds for salt and fat could avoid a warning label. As a result, a product that is genuinely harmful to health could appear unproblematic on its packaging.
Consumers are moving ahead of the debate
Consumers are acting before the debate is settled. According to a survey published by PwC last year and involving slightly more than 1,000 Indian shoppers, 84% of respondents were extremely or very concerned about food safety. More than three-quarters said they were particularly worried about pesticide residues.
Some food companies are placing QR codes on packaging that link to the results of laboratory tests. This is a small but noticeable sign that consumer trust is being rebuilt one product at a time.
According to estimates by the World Health Organization, one in 10 people worldwide falls ill each year after consuming contaminated food. Children under five account for 40% of this burden.
Experts say sustained progress requires a shift from reacting to crises to establishing preventive systems. That will require modern laboratories, information-sharing among institutions and sufficient numbers of well-trained staff.
At present, raids are the main tool drawing public attention to the problem in India. Whether they will create cleaner kitchens or merely a more photogenic regulatory system remains unclear.
