Hello,

Imagine being allergic to milk—where even the tiniest trace can send your body spiralling into chaos, triggering anything from hives and nausea to severe, life-threatening reactions. You’re used to scrutinising every label, hyper-aware that one hidden ingredient could ruin your day, or worse. One day, the government rolls back regulations, allowing food manufacturers to quietly omit key information from labels. Suddenly, what you eat becomes a dangerous gamble.

Now cut to real life. In 2021, the Modi government mandated that the poor in India should get only iron-fortified rice under all government welfare schemes. The chemically fortified rice laced with micronutrients, including iron, is dangerous for people with genetic diseases such as thalassemia and sickle cell anaemia. Their body can’t simply process excess iron and could lead to organ damage.

The order was particularly dire for India’s tribespeople, with the last available official estimates suggesting that up to 34% of them are affected by these diseases. These are people who simply don’t have a choice to decide what to eat, and the majority of them didn’t know what was in the rice they were eating.

But the Modi government had a safety rule that required health warning labels on gunny sacks carrying fortified rice, telling people with such diseases to avoid fortified rice. It was minimal, almost dismissive.  No public campaigns, no effort to inform the masses of potential risks. 

But a civil society organisation went to the Supreme Court against the government saying the feckless warning was so obscure that nobody would read it. They wanted the government to go big with the warning, screen people with the diseases to stop them from having the rice and provide alternatives.

The government probably saw what was coming their way and got ahead of the game. It simply removed the law that put statutory obligation on them to warn people about the dangers of fortified rice.

But how does a government wish away an inconvenient rule without appearing arbitrary?

My colleague Shreegireesh Jalihal brings the scoop on what the government did overnight to erase an inconvenient rule. How the government went hunting for a convenient expert opinion, and how the US does things in their land was conveniently used as evidence to erase the rule despite the two countries having stark differences.

Read it here.