‘Laddus’ to drugs, adulteration is a national crisis

On the 19 September, this post appeared on X aka Twitter. I found the post intriguing for its sad, wistful tone. Was Amma dead? Why else would the author write it in this way, the way one would talk about the misunderstood family pet, the horse that refused to cross the damaged bridge or the dog that barked at the cobra under the woodpile and saved the family’s baby? Why not ask Amma, that unsung hero, why the laddus troubled her? I read the post so many times in admiration of its synthetic charm, the way it drew a portrait of a prophet not honoured at home. As it turned out, I would have many more chances to read it because this highly specific story was tweeted by dozens of accounts, each pretending to be just another account offering their individual anecdote in the “adulterated” Tirupati laddu scandal. The wits of X immediately declared this phenomenon a “one nation, one amma, one laddu” scheme. Others asked why Appa was denied the chance to try the laddu that Amma ate every year. Obviously, it was a plain case of an internet disinformation campaign style called astroturfing. Astroturf, as I am sure you know, originally was just a successful brand of fake grass, the kind you can roll out like a carpet. Today, astroturfing refers to carpeting the internet with a message in such a way that it seems like it is coming from the grass-roots, from the ordinary, innocent person who has no stakes in making any political point—like the family horse, dog or Amma.

The Tirupati laddu story has continued to roll and roll. It began when the Telugu Desam Party alleged that the temple laddus had been made with ghee mixed with beef tallow, fish oil and other fearsome substances during the regime of the previous YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) government in Andhra Pradesh. Swept under the green rug is the small print of the allegations—that the temple’s supplier was adulterating the ghee with some kind of cheaper “foreign fat”, which could have been anything from soya bean oil, sunflower oil or palm oil. Of course, it was the idea that the laddus had animal fat which spun it into a national controversy with wounded feelings and dark reminders that after all, the previous chief minister, Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, is a Christian. This is not the first time that TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu has implied that Reddy’s religion gives him evil motivations such as “promoting the desecration of Hindu idols”. Not one for subtleties, Naidu had said at a TDP executive meeting in 2021, “You are a Christian CM, you hold the Bible. My favourite God is Lord Venkateswara, your favourite God is Jesus Christ.” I am not sure what Reddy was supposed to have said at this point apart from, “Okay, Captain Obvious.” Naidu also said back then that someone needs to keep an eye on new churches appearing in the state, again a subtlety-free statement about what he thinks of as an inherently suspicious creation—Christians. Naidu here joins bigoted leaders everywhere in the world in creating scandal about the food ways of minorities. In the US, for instance, right-wing politicians Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are currently running a well-documented misinformation campaign that Haitian immigrants have been eating cats and dogs. Trump’s acolyte Laura Loomer said that White House will “smell like curry” if Kamala Harris becomes the President. Same same.

Meanwhile, actual adulteration, not to be confused with that millennial malaise adulting, is a national crisis in India. In August, nearly 12% of Indian-tested spices were reported to be failing the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) quality and safety standards. This happened after Singapore and Hong Kong stopped the sale of some varieties of MDH and Everest masalas, reporting high levels of pesticide content. During raids in two factories in Delhi, police say they found 15 tonnes of “masalas” made with everything from wood dust, acids and substandard oils to grains.

India: How Water Pollution Triggers Migration Waves, a 2024 report from the global non-profit Fair Planet, says that contaminated groundwater has affected over two million people in India this year. Meaning that industrial pollutants in the water are pushing hundreds of thousands of people to leave their hometowns and villages.

Among the range of adulterated substances consumed in India, the most panic-inducing is counterfeited drugs. Stories of cancer patients discovering they have been cheated and had been ingesting anti-fungals abound. The big story about adulterated drugs in India is not that of a cottage-industry level of adulteration. Dinesh Thakur and Prashant Reddy, authors of the 2022 book, The Truth Pill: The Myth of Drug Regulation in India, have pointed out that the poor regulation of legitimate drug manufacturers is risking the lives of people not just in India but around the developing world. This means that no one is checking what is going on in factories making cough syrups and cancer drugs as much as they are monitoring laddus.

That said, fake drugs in India is not quite a cottage industry either. On 20 September, Maharashtra police filed a 1,200-page chargesheet which revealed, among other allegations, that a Haridwar-based lab which made veterinary medicine was the source of antibiotics distributed to government hospitals in several states. Perhaps you think the shocking part was the veterinary medicine bit? No. The chargesheet says that the said antibiotics were made with talcum powder and starch. This was the same day that Amma’s prophecies were being spread like raita all over Indian Twitter. A point I raise not because I am into conspiracies but because I want to agree that beef tallow laddus allegedly engineered by a former chief minster in possession of a Bible is so much less sexy than talcum powder antibiotics from Uttarakhand. Though if you want to know about a time when talcum powder was a sexy essential and not medicine, ask your amma or your Astroturf amma.

Nisha Susan is the author of The Women Who Forgot To Invent Facebook And Other Stories. She posts @chasingiamb.