The importance of this question has already been amply brought home to all the honourable Members of this House by my Friend Pandit Maitra who has just spoken and although he may be the last surviving member of that Commission which he referred to I hope the whole House is alive to the need of stopping adulteration of foodstuffs. It is a disgrace that should be put down at the earliest possible opportunity. It is really curious that for two years all sorts of adulteration of foodstuffs has gone on and the evil is showing no signs of diminishing yet and in spite of the fact that we are passing hundreds of laws and ordinances and rushing through dozens of Bills in a couple of minutes each, the Government has not come forward with a Bill dealing with this important matter and so as to stop this evil which is affecting the health as well as the prosperity of the whole nation. It is likely to affect the country much more seriously than any other single thing. We know that this adulteration is going on on such a scale that people have not left anything undone. in this respect. I may mention here a highly interesting case which came to light in my province. A certain merchant was, throughout the war, i.e. for nearly six years melting tons of gur in big pans. After melting it, he mixed it with near about twenty per cent of mud, earth taken from the old “gadhies” of which we have many in the C. P. and from which we get very find earth. This earth was consistently mixed with gur to the extent of 20 per cent and the adulterated gur was sold to all sorts of people, for all those years. The case came to the court only because the potter who supplied the large quantity of earth on the backs of his donkeys was not paid the money due to him, by the avaricious merchant and he had to bring the matter to the court. That was how the Government came to know of this dastardly offence. There are even worse cases than this.
