Food wastage: Guest control order

“It’s a criminal waste,” retorted India’s food minister KV Thomas on the amount of food wasted at a lavish wedding ceremony held recently. It has left such a deep impression that the Delhi Government appointed a 15 member panel to suggest ways of curbing food waste and the panel is expected to submit its report by October, 2011. The Government is further planning to implement the Guest Control Order (GCO) of 1960s to check the rampant wastage of food by restricting the number of guests to be invited at wedding parties. It’s true that wastage of food at wedding is quite ubiquitous and blatant. But by no means, such wastage is restrained to marriages only. In fact, wastage of food at the marriages (which is once in a lifetime activity) is quite small compared to the wastage at restaurants, five-star hotels or even corporate parties (which are no less in terms of grandeur and lavishness).

According to a study conducted by an NGO, daily wastage of food at starred hotels in Mumbai would be enough to feed the entire slum dwellers of the city. Between 15-20 per cent all cooked food at the restaurants and parties are wasted. Even the collective wastage in the household dinning tables would be much more than a few wedding parties! So, if the sole aim of reinforcing the act is to check food wastage, then targeting weddings is nothing but a short-sighted and half-hearted attempt.

Axing the grand parties at the wedding will not only hurt the essence of the wedding (which people plan for years in advance), but also effect the great Indian wedding industry at large - which generates close to Rs.1,20,000 crores annually. Apart from denting growth of the industry, it will lead to huge unemployment and economic loss.

Above all, wasting food is more of a habit than practice. The government should replicate a lesson or two from the measures taken around the globe to curb wastage of food. The Hayashi Ya Japanese restaurant on the Upper West Side of the US charges 3 per cent extra if there are left over of food on your plate. Similarly, householders could be fined up to £1,000 in UK, if they fail to comply with the new rules on refuse sorting. In Japan, if a food company wants to throw its waste into a municipal landfill, it has to pay 55 yen/kg.

Perhaps imposing fines on the hotels (or event management agencies) would be more apt than introducing a cap on the number of guests in wedding parties. In any case, given the complexity of Indian marriages, it’s practically impossible to implement such capping and would eventually invite bribery and corruption.

At a time when one out of every three malnourished child of the world live in India, the food price is sky-rocketing and millions go to bed without even a morsel, curbing food wastage is a noble initiative. But GCO is quite myopic and comes at a larger cost and should be completely overhauled. Nearly 30 per cent of country’s fruits and vegetables rot due to lack of cold-storage facility. So, for now, government should be much more worried about the tons of food-grains, wasted on ill-equipped warehouses.