Behind the record sales of Parle-G during the pandemic is India’s murky reality—lack of safety net and food security
It was the summer of 2020. With the pan-demic raging across an India under a hard lockdown, journalist Daya Sagar was rep-or-ting from Uttar Pradesh, when he dis-cove-red the “Parle-G girl”. Not the cherub on the pac-kaging of the biscuit brand—which had itself generated a fair bit of controversy and fake news a few years ago—but the year-and-a-half-old Preeti—who hit the headlines for having survived only on Parle-G dipped in water for five days.
Preeti was not alone. Sagar recalls that in those days, it was quite common to find migrant famil-ies feeding their children Parle-G to keep them alive. “It was not their first choice. But there simply was nothing else to eat,” he says.
During the pandemic, as sales of all biscuits and cookies shot up, the brand that scripted a real success story was Parle-G. With millions unable to afford basic amenities due to sudden, often total, loss of income, Parle-G sold by the carton. That year, Parle logged record sales.
Parle-G was launched in the British era when biscuits were not part of the Indian palate. “Biscuits were a European snack,” says Mayank Shah, senior category head of Parle Products. “Parle-G cha-n-ged that. It has now become a staple in India,” he adds.
Much of it has to do with its affordability. The smallest packet of Parle-G costs just Rs 2. There are roughly 260 calories in 12 Parle-G biscuits. The Rs 30 pack contains 30 biscuits. According to global estimates, 1,200 calories is considered the minimum intake a person needs to survive.
“It’s all we could afford,” says Raju, a Bihari mig-rant labourer who was stuck in Delhi for two mo-n-ths before he ran out of money and decided to walk home. “A packet of Parle-G gives an energy bo-ost. We walked miles in the hot sun and ate anyt-hing we got. And Parle-G is available everywhere,” he adds. This was no small feat for the ori-ginal ‘Make in India’ brand that has survived the Partition, a generational shift in tastes and the widening rich-poor gap.
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Parle Products started in 1929, about two deca-des after the Swadeshi movement began. Its fou-n-der Mohanlal Dayal Chauhan, who lived in Mum-bai’s Vile Parle (named after the company), wanted to contribute to the growing nationalist movement by creating a ‘swadeshi’ brand that would not only provide Indians with indigenous alternatives to British products, but also ensure affordability for all.
Parle-G remains popular because of its affordability. But it also reveals a murkier reality—India’s lack of a safety net and food security.
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When PM Narendra Modi ann-o-u-nced the lockdown on March 24, 2020, about 1.4 billion Indians had just four hours’ notice to stock up on essentials. But even as products flew off supermarket shelves, the poor found themselves in long queues outside ration shops. By the next day, when the seriousness of it all had started sinking in, thousands decided to walk home. And a Rs 2 Parle-G packet was all that many could afford. Beh-ind the pandemic success story of Parle-G is the Indian State’s failure to provide food security to its weakest stakeholders.
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“It was madness. Migrants were crisscrossing the country. There was no arrangement for their livelihood, food or lodging. When we went to feed 1,000 hungry people, we found 10,000 waiting in queue,” recalls Ran-chi-based Right To Food activist Akash Ranjan. In the initial months of the lockdown, Ranjan and his team were actively involved in providing rations to poor families on the move.
“We crowd-funded the rations and tried to ensure a steady supply of essentials like food grains, pulses and mustard oil to as many families as we could,” Ranjan says. He adds that Parle-G was not part of their relief packages. “We tried to include food with more nutritional value,” he says.
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Despite their evident ease of tran-spo-rtation, extensive availability and long shelf life, Parle-G biscuits, acco-r-ding to Delhi-based nutritionist Ishi Khosla, are not the best form of sustenance. “It is ultimately junk food made out of sugar and fats. It will help you survive, but prolonged consumption can cause adverse health issues,” Khosla adds.
She elaborates that it is not that hard or expensive to provide basic, nutritious meals to the poor. “Rice cakes with jaggery, khi-c-hdi, boiled potatoes or even bana-nas are better options. They are cheap and clean sources of nutrition.” The problem, she feels, is not with Parle--G but with using calories as the only metric for nutrit-i-on. In India, a person who consu-mes less than 2,100-2,400 cal-ories is considered Be-l-ow Poverty Line. But Kho-sla asserts that just loading on calories without co-n-si-dering the source of the calories or mai-n-taining a balanced diet can be counter-productive. But, as Akash Ranjan puts it, “Parle-G is cheaper than grains or vegetables.”
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Civil society and governments have a wide variety of opti-ons to choose from when distributing rel-ief. However, those receiving the rations often have no cho-ice over what they get. While images and videos of people surviving on Parle-G (which also distributed 3 crore free biscu-its in 2020) evoked shock and pity, 43-year-old dom-e-stic wo-r-ker Saima Khat-oon hopes that her children don’t have to survive on Parle-G and dry rat--ions again. Dur-ing the lockdown, she and her husband were forced out of work. Saima’s ration card, like that of thousands of migrant workers, was back at her village in Mal--da, West Bengal, ma-k-ing her ineligible for gov-ernment aid. “We sur-vived for months on the kindness of one of my employers, who loaded us with Parle-G out of affection for the kids,” she adds.
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RTI activist Anjali Bhardwaj—who has been working with thousands of migrant families like Saima’s in Del-hi--NCR who fall outside the ambit of food security schemes and gov-ern-m-ent benefits due to lack of documentation—says not much has cha-nged in two years since the pandemic, and that one of the key reas-ons migrants had to survive on bisc-u-its or go without food was the-ir inability to access State-run- relief. “Many migrants who come to big cities often don’t have proper documentation. The process of gett-ing the right papers is time consuming, and those from the weakest strata often fall through the net.” She also feels that though the impact of the pandemic was evident, both central and state governments failed to learn any lessons from the pandemic.
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Despite the Supreme Court ordering the gover-nment to ensure ration cards for all migrants, lak-hs still remain without the essential docume-ntation, mainly because ration cards are given out on the basis of the 2011 census. While the pop-ulation has increased over the past decade, the number of ration cards hasn’t. When Bhar-dwaj filed an RTI on what the government was doing about the SC order, she found the authorities were not planning to follow the order till the next census was (the 2021 census was delayed by the pandemic). Until then, the lives of these und-ocumented migrants will remain in limbo.
Most states have also failed to provide community kitchens as was mandated by the SC during the pandemic. The ones that did catered only to urban populations. In Jharkhand, for instance, the state-run ‘Dal Bhat’ kendras are functional, but only in big cities like Ranchi.
The pandemic, says Bhardwaj, did create a lot of additional problems, but food security itself has been a potent issue plaguing billions in India for decades. The government’s poor performance in ensuring food for all during the pandemic lockdown highlighted the lack of will among political leaders in solving India’s food crisis.
(This appeared in the print edition as "No Prayer for the Malnourished")