In Maharashtra, Tukaram Mundhe has made food-safety enforcement a highly visible administrative campaign, taking the fight against unsafe food into restaurants, commercial kitchens and businesses. In Bihar, his 2005-batch IAS colleague Kumar Ravi is pursuing a similar public-health priority.

Ravi’s task, however, may be considerably more difficult. The challenge is not merely to identify violations and punish offenders; it is to enforce standards in a state where consumer awareness is uneven, complaints may be harder to elicit, and the absence of a complaint cannot necessarily be taken as evidence that the food being sold is safe.The numbers emerging from Bihar’s food-safety machinery suggest a campaign gathering momentum.

Departmental records for a three-month period show 531 inspections across the state’s 38 districts, food products worth Rs 17.32 lakh seized or destroyed, 15 establishments prosecuted and two establishment licences suspended. These figures offer a snapshot of enforcement under Ravi, Bihar’s health secretary and commissioner of food safety.For Ravi, food safety is not a file to be reviewed between meetings; it is a continuing responsibility that demands daily attention.

His WhatsApp remains open to complaints from the public, and he takes stock of the situation every day—what is happening on the ground, where the gaps are and what more needs to be done. His motivation is rooted in a larger ambition: to make Bihar healthier by preventing illness.As health secretary, Ravi has first-hand exposure to the burden of disease and the number of patients seeking treatment for different ailments.

As commissioner of food safety, he has another lever available to him: reducing the risks that unsafe food can pose to public health. The two responsibilities are connected, even if the second requires additional time in an already demanding schedule.

His primary job as health secretary is consuming enough; yet he continues to carve out time to monitor the food-safety drive and keep the machinery alert. For Ravi, the challenge is to ensure that the zeal against contaminated and unsafe food does not fade after an inspection, a seizure or a headline—but remains a sustained administrative priority.

Over the past three months, Ravi has ensured health department officials to undergo 14 days of induction training and 26 days of on-the-job training before being deployed as food safety officers to lead district-level inspection and raid teams. The department has ordered strict action against food adulteration, special inspection drives covering milk and dairy products, sweets, fried foods, spices and other food items, and compliance checks at hotels, restaurants, catering services and e-commerce warehouses, while mandating the daily uploading of inspection reports on the FoSCoS (Food Safety Compliance System) portal and prompt action on public complaints.For Ravi, an IIT-Kanpur alumnus who joined the IAS in 2005, the task calls for both technical understanding and administrative persistence.

His career has taken him through the demands of district administration, election management, flood relief and urban governance. Now, food safety presents a different test: one in which the consequences of weak enforcement are not always immediately visible, and where the success of an inspection may depend on what happens long after the inspectors have left.The department’s inspection records show the breadth of the exercise.

Officials have visited sweet shops, dairy outlets, restaurants, retail establishments and other food businesses. The action has extended to familiar names in the organised food sector, including KFC, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Barbeque Nation, as well as businesses operating in the less formal parts of the food economy.

Reported deficiencies have included poor hygiene, improper storage and food-handling lapses. Officials have collected samples for laboratory testing, issued improvement notices and taken enforcement action where violations were identified.The campaign has also reached the expanding retail and quick-commerce ecosystem.

On October 22, officials reported seizing and destroying 40 litres of expired Amul milk at a Blinkit store in Patna. At another store, expired ghee, flour and spices were found.

In Hajipur, the licence of Sahib Hotel was suspended and its operations stopped after an inspection following a complaint about cockroaches revealed an unhygienic kitchen.Such cases demonstrate why food safety cannot be confined to the question of adulteration. The threat may lie in expired products, contaminated ingredients, inadequate refrigeration, poor storage or the conditions in which food is prepared.

A meal can become unsafe without containing a deliberately added adulterant. Enforcement, therefore, has to address the entire chain, from procurement and storage to preparation and sale.But the more difficult part of Ravi’s assignment lies outside the inspection room.

In a state with uneven consumer awareness, an administration cannot assume people know how to recognise a violation, where to report it or what action they can reasonably expect after filing a complaint. A customer who discovers expired food or an unhygienic kitchen may simply stop visiting the establishment, warn a few acquaintances or accept the experience as an everyday inconvenience.

Others may be reluctant to complain, uncertain whether the authorities will respond or unwilling to risk a confrontation with a local business.This is an important distinction between a campaign that responds to public pressure and one that has to create the conditions for that pressure to emerge. Maharashtra’s highly visible crackdown has placed food safety prominently in the public conversation.

Bihar under Ravi is trying to build that awareness, while ensuring that the absence of a comparable volume of complaints does not become a reason for complacency. This is why Ravi and his officials are going the extra mile to ensure that Bihar’s enforcement model must work even when consumers do not routinely alert the authorities.That makes proactive inspection indispensable.

Officials cannot depend entirely on complaints to decide which establishments to visit. Risk-based inspections, surprise checks, regular sampling and follow-up visits can help identify problems that remain invisible to customers.

District-wise inspection data can reveal where enforcement is concentrated and where it is lagging. The departmental figures, for instance, record 87 inspections in Patna, 41 in Rohtas, 40 in Saran and 37 in Gopalganj during the reported period.Ravi’s challenge is also to ensure that the campaign does not become a succession of raids, seizures and photographs.

An inspection is an intervention, not an outcome. A sample sent to a laboratory may confirm a violation, or it may not.

An improvement notice matters only if the business corrects the deficiency. A prosecution matters only if it progresses through the legal process and produces an enforceable consequence.

And a suspended licence is meaningful only if the establishment remains shut until it meets the required standards.Ravi’s background as an engineer and administrator may help him approach the task as a systems problem: inspections, laboratories, district coverage, prosecutions and compliance must work together.The 531 inspections and the reported seizures and prosecutions are a useful starting point. They are evidence of enforcement activity, and there is a possibility this can lead to a safer food environment.

For Bihar, the real test is whether the campaign can make unsafe practices harder to sustain and complaints easier to register. Ravi clearly has made a beginning, but his challenges in Bihar could be bigger than his famous batch mate has been facing in Maharashtra.Subscribe to India Today Magazine- Ends