T
hen there are officials who audit papers, and then there are others who walk into a court room's very canteen with their audit team a day after public criticism of themselves. Officer Tukaram Mundhe falls squarely into the second category. Having assumed charge as Commissioner of the Maharashtra FDA in late May of this year, this IAS official from the 2005 batch has made the normally unimportant post of FDA Commissioner in India the most highly watched administrative post in India today.
He has earned rousing applause from a public gathering in Pune while facing the charge of conducting a sweeping crackdown on his watch from certain segments of the hospitality industry.
Tukaram Mundhe was born on 3rd June, 1975. After acquiring a Master of Political Science Degree from a reputed educational institution, he stood 20th in the 2005 Civil Services examination and thus entered IAS services. It wasn’t long before his well-recognized discipline came to be the hallmark of his career which saw him being transferred time and again in the following two decades across various high profile administrative postings of Solapur, Nashik, Nagpur and Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation amongst many others. And in all those places, his uncompromising nature and tendency to enforce rules and regulations brought him in conflict with politicians and vested interests which led to his close to twenty-five number of transfers during twenty years! It's a highly unusual record in Indian bureaucracy and has actually worked in favor of his name rather than against his as it helped cement the image of an uncompromising officer, the one who can’t be bribed or pushed around.
Such was his reputation when he assumed office as FDA Secretary and Commissioner in May.
In less than a week since taking up the position, Mundhe initiated an unprecedented food safety operation in the state that continues even today. Even before the end of August, more than 1,100 inspections were conducted all over Mumbai by the FDA led by him, resulting in license revocation, seizures of adulterants in the amount of crores, and closure of eateries flouting hygiene standards.
The milk sector was hit particularly hard by the ongoing campaign. Speaking about the dairy industry, Mundhe made it quite clear that the FDA will be much more active when it comes to inspections at different stages of the milk production chain, including producers, distributors, wholesalers, and retailers. "Milk is not just another product—it is a nutritional backbone for millions of babies, mothers, patients, and seniors," noted the commissioner, adding that there is no way to tolerate such acts as adulteration of milk products because that is equal to playing with the health of citizens.
As a result, it became common place to see videos on social media of milk suppliers dumping milk into drains instead of having it seized by the FDA team during inspection raids.
Nevertheless, the response of Mundhe to the criticism of his activities deserves special attention. It all started after Bombay High Court accused FDA of "selectivity" of inspections because while conducting raids they preferred focusing on private eateries but did not touch the canteens of government agencies, including the Mantralaya secretariat and Bombay High Court complex canteens in particular. Moreover, the inspection video which the FDA presented as the proof of proper inspection at the Mantralaya canteen turned out to be in fact the record of inspection at some private eatery.
However, Mundhe did not give an inch to criticism.
His FDA team inspected three canteens at Bombay High Court premises itself and as a result one was ordered to shut down because there was not valid FSSAI license and two others got an order to improve their conditions.
The story that was shown everywhere in the internet with notes saying "Nobody is above food safety regulations not even Bombay High Court" became the most memorable part of this operation.
The response from the general public towards the tactics employed by Mundhe has been taking on more of a form of celebration of celebrity than mere administrative attention. In the last public appearance held in Pune this week, Mundhe received a standing ovation as he walked down the ramp of Bal Gandharva Ranga Mandir, with members of the audience getting up to applaud his presence and take the footage with their mobile devices. The footage of his reception was soon circulated in cyberspace, captioned "Unstoppable Tukaram," and one of the most frequently mentioned hashtags, saying that it captures "immense love, respect, and admiration for a government officer—not out of courtesy and protocol but from the heart." His supporters have already begun referring to him by the name of "Singham of the IAS," an honorary title of a mythical policeman from famous Bollywood films, who is an epitome of incorruptibility.
However, there have been critics. Members of the dairy and hospitality industry are complaining about the speed and rigor of the operation being harmful for the small-scale operators and not paying attention to the fact that bigger businesses and hotels with connections were going through the inspection process much more easily. Even the Bombay High Court was implicitly questioning the uniformity of the campaign.
It is yet to be seen how long the enforcement campaign will go and what degree of uniformity the inspectors of the FDA, which Mundhe leads, will manage to preserve in its execution.
