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Food - When Pure is not so Pure




Vegetarianism vs. non-vegetarianism is a long, never-ending debate, especially in India. And now veganism has joined the fight too, but let's just keep it aside for the time being. With almost 30 percent of its population being vegetarian, India is seen as one of the countries with the largest vegetarian population and the other 70 percent consumes one or other form of meat. 

Being a vegetarian or a non-vegetarian is just a preference right? Then why is there so much noise every time this topic is pulled out on any platform? Because in India it is never just a dietary preference. It is always associated with sociological aspects such as caste, religion and privilege. There are a lot of studies that conclude that certain micronutrients for the body can be derived only from meat, but still, a section of people choose to be vegetarians and it is their right choose anything for their own health. Vegetarianism is fine to the point of preference but the problem comes when it becomes “pure veg”. Here comes the question: What is so pure in being a vegetarian? It declares every non-vegetarian as impure. 

The recent introduction of a “Pure veg fleet” by Zomato for its pure veg customers has caused a wildfire of debate on this food policing. This pure veg fleet will not enter into places where meat is cooked, will not carry any meat in the same box as the pure veg meal, and will wear green t-shirts as uniform instead of the infamous red Zomato uniform. Can sense a strong smell of segregation and untouchability, can't we? Let us analyze what would have led Zomato to think of such an initiative. There is a sector of people who refrain from ordering food online because they are skeptical about how their food is cooked and handled. They are so disgusted by just the thought of a perfectly packed chicken biryani carried along with their perfectly packed paneer kebab. This seems like a serious “me problem” rather than something that requires an initiative from a huge corporation that normalizes such classist phobias. 

Food choices in India are heavily influenced by the individual's religion, caste, and creed. Historically the privileged sections of the society refrained from taking meat as their occupations were not physically intensive compared to the other sections who had to sweat all day for a living. Even though we have come a long way in terms of equality from then, this form of food bias is a subtle way of expressing the underlying classism.

There are a lot of living spaces even in highly modernized metro cities with associations headed by retired privileged people that do not allow meat vendors into the gates. Talking about personal food choices, it is a very common rule in these apartments that refrain people from cooking meat. As a non-vegetarian, I will never understand how people feel disgusted by the smell of a flavorful chicken curry. Anyhow, there is a very good potential to ban any delivery agent other than the pure veg fleet ones from entering the gates of these societies which is an added trouble to already struggling delivery partners. And the next possible initiative could be that pure veg delivery partners will only be hired for the pure veg fleet which questions inclusivity. This initiative is problematic as it caters to the view of vegetarian supremacy and segregates non-vegetarian food as something low that must not come into contact by any means. This is textbook untouchability. We cannot see this as just a preference when it is used to imply that one is better than the other. 

Zomato burned its finger and rolled back its idea to differentiate delivery partners by uniform and declared all of its delivery agents would wear only red uniforms as usual. But what intrigues me is that the highly qualified marketing analysis and project management team of such an organization totally missed a lot of points that Twitter pointed out in just a day. The power parity in the hierarchy is another discussion for another day, I guess. 

At a time when we are still struggling to eradicate the inequalities in our society even in this day and era, it is highly disheartening to see modern ways of discrimination being fed and normalized. Another concerning thing I witnessed in this whole chaos is a lot of the young population being blatantly casteist and lauding the move for all the wrong reasons. This clearly shows that the fight for a common ground is not over and there is a constant need to keep preaching and keep pushing back such agendas. Food is universal, Food is emotion and food is what we are – Let us just keep it at that!!


Thanu

March, 2024

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