Smog is unavoidable. Unsafe food isn’t. That’s why there’s little outrage over food adulteration

Earlier this week, India’s central food regulator launched a nationwide enforcement drive against adulteration in milk and related products such as paneer. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India asked states and Union Territories to step up inspections of milk, paneer and khoya. Around the same time, egg quality checks were ordered after reports of banned antibiotic residues. Samples of both branded and unbranded eggs were sent to designated laboratories. All of this was presented as preventive action – routine regulatory housekeeping.

It fits a familiar pattern. Food safety enforcement in Indian cities is episodic. There are raids, seizures and press releases every few months. Adulterated paneer, sweets or dairy products are confiscated in bulk. The issue makes a brief appearance in the news cycle and then slips out of view.

This would matter less if paneer and eggs were niche items. They are not. Over the past several years, both have come to be seen as affordable sources of protein in lower-middle-class and poorer urban neighbourhoods. That shift is visible in everyday markets. When these products fail even basic safety standards, the consequences are concrete. Consumers are short-changed nutritionally, and the substances used in adulteration can pose direct health risks. Yet such episodes rarely provoke sustained public attention or political outrage.

Compare this with the response to air pollution in Delhi and other cities. When smog levels rise, public commentary swells. It is usually the upper middle class and the affluent who are most audible – writing columns, giving interviews, filling social-media timelines, accompanied by the familiar roster of experts and activists. There are calls for emergency measures, for accountability, for swift government action. Conversations quickly turn to relocation, lifestyle changes and long-term health risks.

This contrast is not meant to diminish the seriousness of air pollution or to suggest that concern about it is misplaced. The crisis is real and demands urgent action. The point is simpler: to understand why different hazards trigger very different public responses.

Public space is already hostile for the poor

The absence of visible protest around food safety is often explained away as apathy, ignorance or political manipulation. That reading misses something more basic about how public space is lived in Indian cities.

For the poor and much of the lower middle class, public space is already hostile. Daily life unfolds on overcrowded buses and trains, through long commutes spent standing and waiting, amid constant jostling. Neighbourhoods are shaped by broken pavements, rotting garbage, poor sanitation and unrelenting noise. Public space is not experienced as a shared civic realm. It is something to be endured and negotiated, day after day.

The upper middle class and the affluent relate to public space very differently. Over time, they have learned to bypass it. Private cars replace public transport. Gated societies replace mixed neighbourhoods. Air-conditioned homes, offices and malls create insulated interiors that blunt heat, noise and crowding. Money buys distance from the everyday disorder of the city. A private cocoon takes shape.

This is why air pollution unsettles this group so deeply. Air is one of the few public goods that cannot be fully opted out of. Air purifiers help, but only indoors and only to a point. The moment one steps outside, the cocoon gives way. Roads remain shared. Smog seeps into spaces that wealth had otherwise managed to seal off.

For those lower down the economic ladder, pollution often does not register as a sudden rupture. It becomes one more layer added to an already degraded environment. Warnings about life expectancy being cut short by years feel abstract against the immediate pressure of getting through the day. The harm is real, but it rarely interrupts routine in the way a missed wage, a power cut or a transport breakdown does.

Food occupies the same everyday public space. In many lower-middle-class and poorer neighbourhoods of Delhi, this is visible in routine transactions. Loose paneer is cut and weighed across small dairy counters, often without any clear sense of where it comes from and sometimes without refrigeration. Eggs are stacked in shops or sold off roadside carts, uneven in size and quality. There are occasional whispers about “artificial eggs” or synthetic paneer, but little more. Even when the deception seems obvious, it is rarely challenged. These exchanges pass without comment, absorbed into the ordinary rhythm of life.

In wealthier neighbourhoods, the picture is different. Even small retail shops stock better-quality paneer and a wider range of eggs. Sellers expect questions. Customers return products, complain, and are willing to pay more for consistency. Where purchasing power is higher, tolerance for doubtful quality is lower.

Brand labels, cold chains and certified suppliers offer wealthier consumers a way to manage risk. For poorer consumers, these protections are often out of reach. This produces a quiet paradox. Packaged food is increasingly criticised as unhealthy, even as an expensive market for organic and “clean” food opens up for those who can afford it. What is described as choice begins to look more like a tiered system of protection.

The problem is not the cost alone 

Higher prices for logistics or branding are not, by themselves, the issue. The problem arises when the basic identity of what is being sold starts to vary by class. Paneer, by definition, has to meet certain compositional standards. Eggs have to meet safety norms. If they do not, they are not cheaper versions of the same product. They are something else entirely.

This is where food safety exposes a deeper inequality. In better-off areas, sellers face reputational risk and closer scrutiny. In poorer localities, price pressure and weak enforcement allow inferior products to circulate with little resistance. This is not because consumers do not know what they are buying. It is because their choices are constrained by income, location and regulation.

The lack of outrage, then, is not indifference. It reflects the conditions of survival in public space. When everyday life already involves navigating multiple unmanaged risks, mobilising around one more becomes difficult. Adaptation takes the place of protest.

Food adulteration does not trigger the same reaction as air pollution because exit is still possible. Risk can be shifted, avoided or pushed further down the chain. It does not disappear; it simply slips out of elite view.

Seen this way, the question is not why outrage is missing, but why it surfaces where it does. Public anger follows exposure that cannot be escaped. That tells us less about public apathy and more about how Indian cities distribute danger and protection across class lines.

Pollution briefly makes this unevenness visible. Food safety shows how it operates quietly, every day, not just when a crisis breaks into view.

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