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India’s food safety crisis and BJP’s political reshuffle | South Central 89

South Central explores the prevalence of contaminated food even at top-end eateries, as well as the BJP’s big political reshuffle.

Dhanya Rajendran, Pooja Prasanna

Published:21st Aug, 2026 at 6:21 PM

In this week’s episode of South Central, hosts Dhanya Rajendran and Pooja Prasanna first discuss raids and inspections across the country at restaurants and the prevalence of contaminated food even at top-end eateries. They are joined by food influencer and author Krish Ashok, and TNM reporter Shivani Kava.

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Krish says that the issue must be framed against the context of a country that does not have adequate resources or regular systems in place to ensure food safety. “In general, governments, states, civil servants and so on have gotten social media savvy. There is a tendency to go after theatre, and go to places where the raids will result in drama and shock. So a lot of systemic checks are not met. We are getting better, but that does not mean things are not bad. And if we dig deeper, food safety in India has never risen above what is available in a third-world country,” he explains.

Krish also speaks about the wastage of food. “In case of expiry dates and consumption, in a poor country, there are people who are ready to take expired food…,” he says.

Shivani explains how she was drawn into investigating safety and cleanliness at eateries and cloud kitchens in her story published earlier on TNM. “We saw some violations, and we tried to find how easy the licensing for these cloud kitchens was. Swiggy and Zomato do say that they have audits, but these violations are still happening. Food Safety officials say they are understaffed or that they only investigate when they get specific complaints, and so on,” she says.

Dhanya says that food delivery apps do not remove a restaurant that serves bad food as flagged by a consumer, but they hide it for a few days from the algorithm.

Krish speaks about the shock value of ‘catching’ bad food and identifying unhygienic conditions at hotels. “There is a certain shock to this and the outrage, therefore, is maximum. But then there is also a lot of economic pressure on people to ignore expired food or small physical consequences of consuming bad food. There is also the aspect of chemical contamination, which accumulates in our food, even if we buy raw food and cook it. So the outrage about hotels is also a bit selective, we will have to say, because our food is fundamentally contaminated and we often seem to not care about that,” he points out.

The panel further speaks about influencer culture, political will, and how our idea of food consumption has changed over time.

In the second part of the discussion, the hosts discuss the BJP’s big political reshuffle. They are joined by Aditya Menon, journalist and Political Editor of The Quint.

Dhanya starts the discussion by pointing out how the reshuffle has been more about re-allocation. Aditya says that all the key positions remain virtually the same, though Smriti Irani’s placement as second in command is significant.

“The big news is from the IT cell, of Amit Malaviya being moved out. He is being blamed for the lack of outreach with Gen Z. But we do not know; he may just be back, so we must wait and watch,” he says.

The RSS imprint cannot be missed, says Pooja. “Ram Madhav did not get along very well with Modi or Shah, but he has been brought in. BL Santosh also has been retained and continues to have some influence, though not unchecked. This is also a very Gujarat kind of functioning; this change of moving people when there is some groundswell,” she says.

On Smriti Irani, Aditya says there is also confusion about how to deal with Gen Z, and the BJP thinks they do not have enough people to reach out to that section. “She has been problematic, but in the BJP’s ecosystem, she was seen as someone who knew what she was doing,” he observes.

He also says it is a bit unfair of the RSS to make Amit Malaviya the scapegoat. “The Gen Z saying critical things about the PM is also a failure of the RSS and the ABVP. It is being positioned as a fall from Amit and that he did not tap into social media. That is true, but his failure is limited compared to how the leadership failed and were caught napping while this unrest brewed,” Aditya says.

Dhanya asks about Raghav Chadda and Sandeep Pathak.

“It is not surprising that Sandeep was included; he will also play a role when Punjab goes to elections next year. The BJP believes he has inside information on the state. Raghav, we will have to wait and see what happens when the reshuffle happens. But his brand has been tarnished among the youth after he switched,” says Aditya.

Dhanya says that from the public purview, the BJP has been committing misstep after misstep. “For example, the BCI issue, with the students asking the CJI not to come as a guest,” she points out.

Aditya says that the problem lies with the BJP heads knowing only one way of communication–bullying and blaming. “On one hand, the PM says he is the all-forgiving patriarch, but his aides go ahead and intimidate and bully those who raise alarm,” he adds.

The panel further discuss the general swell of students across the board, and the political dissent that has long been brewing, pushing the BJP to now damage control.

Tune in to this episode here

Audio timecodes:

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:01:13 - Headlines

00:08:38 - Food Safety in India

00:51:02 - BJP rejig and PM CARES fund

01:19:34 - Recommendations

References

‘Dimaagi Naxal'- Most malicious label yet by Modi | LME 156 | Pooja Prasanna

How safe is your food? Inside Bengaluru's cloud kitchens

Inside the BJP’s big rejig | Powertrip #161

BL Santhosh: The man with unbridled powers who oversaw BJP's Karnataka loss