It was not Denmark, as was surmised by many, but my longing to get jackfruit back into the food basket of the Malayali that goaded me into introducing the ‘fat tax’. It is found that this traditional fruit, which once inspired our mothers to rustle up heavenly culinary delights and which was fibrous and stomach-friendly, is vanishing from Kerala’s kitchens. An early study conducted by Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, showed that the nutritional status of Malayalis’ was one of the lowest and yet, here is the paradox, they were healthy. A detailed analysis of Kerala’s ‘food balance sheet’ revealed that jackfruit and a host of traditional vegetables and tubers did the trick; they detoxified poisoned bodies. Jackfruit was such an important component of the diet, and we wanted it back on our dining table along with traditional vegetables and tubers.
So the question was how to promote the consumption of jackfruit, and other healthier resilient traditional options. I have already planted 10,000-odd jackfruit saplings in my constituency as part of my promise to plant as many saplings as my lead (31,032) in the just concluded Assembly elections. But this was clearly not enough. We have grander plans, creating jackfruit research institutes and jackfruit processing centres. How do we find the money for such ambitious, healthy living projects?
Then, a friend, Dr Muhammad Kabir, suggested ‘fat tax’ through a Facebook post. I promptly latched on to it. Fat tax on unhealthy non-essential food items to create a corpus fund made sense, and it seemed to agree perfectly with our intention to announce at least one environment initiative in all major sectors. This fund could then be employed in innovative ways to promote the consumption of healthier options like organic vegetables, nutritious traditional fruits and tubers; a cross-subsidisation of sorts. For instance, it can bankroll two major campaigns we are about to launch; one, to make the state self- sufficient in vegetables in two years and the other, to revive the pre-eminence of jackfruit in the food basket.
Now, this is just a small beginning, you can even call this a symbolic move; this fiscal I expect only Rs 10 crore from ‘fat tax’. And while introducing the levy, I have also taken the path of least resistance. We have upped the tax to 14.5 per cent only on certain commodities, like burgers, sandwiches, pizzas, tacos, pasta, and doughnuts; these are items on which a high tax will not invite any major popular disapproval. Such items, mostly cheese-based, are patronised by the high-income groups in the state unlike in the West where these have become staple food.
I was asked that if health was the driving concern why not tax parotta, a hugely popular flatbread notorious for its high ‘maida’ content. The time is not yet ripe to impose tax on food items that are the widely consumed by the common man, the working class. The idea was to adopt the path of least resistance but also to send out a firm and clear message. But the response has not been just huge, but overwhelming. I never imagined that the proposal will trigger such an intense national debate. Even the international media had lapped it up; BBC, Guardian, Washington Post, all these reputed media organisations have picked up the tax for detailed debate.
I was surprised, even a bit amused, to hear that the stocks of certain multinational food giants had fallen as a consequence. Here, I need to emphasise that the move was not just against multinational brands. Any registered food brands, even those locally-grown, selling these high-fat items will be subjected to the ‘fat tax’. This does not mean that we will go after local tea shops or small bunk shops selling such items. However, the intense debate has more than served my purpose. It has prepared the ground to widen the scope of ‘fat tax’ in the coming years by including more non- essential consumables like, say, aerated drinks or food products rich in trans-fat.
The writer is finance minister, Kerala
