Reporting for this story was supported by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.
THE FIRST DAY of the month of Vrishchikam, in the year 1199 of the Malayalam Era – corresponding to 16 November 2023 – marked the start of a new Mandala-Makaravilakku pilgrimage season. Hundreds of thousands of devotees, most of them men, gathered at the Sannidhanam of Sabarimala, a revered Hindu temple in the southern Indian state of Kerala. They had come to receive blessings from the presiding deity, Lord Ayyappa, in the form of the temple’s famed holy offering, or aravana, a fragrant sweet made of coconut milk, rice, jaggery and spices.
But this pilgrimage season, the aravana they got was missing an ingredient – cardamom. In January 2023, the Kerala High Court had stayed the sale of Sabarimala aravana containing the spice as the cardamom used in its preparation was found to have a dangerously high level of pesticide residue.
“I didn’t intend for it to become a controversy,” 53-year-old Prakash S, a cardamom grower and trader, told me in Rajakumari, his hometown in the hills of Idukki, a Kerala district known for its tea and spice plantations. “I am a believer. I didn’t want to cause any problems.”
The annual pilgrimage season at Sabarimala, which lasts for around two months, attracts many millions of devotees and can see two million containers of aravana sold each week, contributing a third of the temple’s revenue. Sabarimala uses a reported 3500 tonnes of jaggery, 600 tonnes of rice and – when it is allowed – around 16 tonnes of cardamom to prepare aravana for the pilgrimage season. For the 2021–22 season, Prakash supplied nine tonnes of cardamom to the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), the administrative authority for the Sabarimala temple. For the next season, however, he supplied none. The temple procures the cardamom it needs through a tender process open to government agencies, cooperatives and private parties. The sample he had supplied was rejected and he did not win the tender, he said, even though he had quoted a price lower than that of the eventual winning party.
As the sole proprietor of Ayyappa Spices, Prakash filed a petition against the TDB at the Kerala High Court in December 2022. It asked the court to conduct an analysis of the cardamom procured for the season. “I only told the lawyer to approach the court against the Devaswom Board’s high-handedness in procuring cardamom.” Prakash said, trying to wash his hands of what followed.
The court ordered tests of the cardamom procured by the temple. These discovered residues of 14 pesticides in excess of the maximum residue limits, or MRLs, specified under the Food Safety and Standards (Contaminants, Toxins and Residues) Regulation, 2011. The detected amounts of numerous pesticides were massively over the prevailing default permitted limit of 0.01 milligrammes per kilogramme – by factors of more than ten or a hundred in some cases, and in the instance of dithiocarbamates, a class of fungicide, of more than a thousand.
The court ruled on 11 January 2023 that the cardamom supplied was unsafe for consumption. Some 665,000 cans of aravana already prepared for that year remained unsold as a result. When the temple was allowed to prepare aravana again, it was without the cardamom so integral to its traditional aroma and flavour.
“What else was the High Court to do after pesticide was discovered at such high levels?” Prakash’s lawyer, Sethunath V, asked. “Our prayer was to quash the TDB’s decision to buy cardamom without open tenders and issue a re-tender. What followed was decided by the High Court suo moto.”
The TDB appealed to the Supreme Court of India. It told the court that cardamom comprised only a small part of aravana, and the sweet’s preparation involved heating the mixture to over 200 degrees Celsius, which would render it safe. A report filed before the court on behalf of Food Safety and Standard Authority of India (FSSAI) also stated that the aravana prepared with the cardamom in question was fit for human consumption. This March, the Supreme Court ordered the reversal of the High Court’s order, calling the petition that had prompted it a motivated writ. Prakash, the court reasoned, was a competitor in the tender who had lost out on a business opportunity, so the High Court should not have accepted his petition. The Supreme Court did not go into the merits of what the tests had uncovered, or the larger questions of food safety that they raised.
In May, the FSSAI increased its default maximum residue limits for pesticides in spices tenfold, from 0.01 milligrammes per kilogramme to 0.1 milligrammes per kilogramme. It reasoned that this was needed to bring India’s standards into agreement with the Codex Alimentarius, a set of international food safety standards maintained by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Health Organisation.
When the TDB issued new tenders for cardamom this year, it attached a new set of conditions. With each lot, the supplier must submit a certificate from an accredited lab to show that pesticide residues are within the FSSAI’s limits. This, the TDB has said, will ensure the safety of aravana. As devotees gather for this year’s pilgrimage, which started on 15 November, the aravana will have the familiar taste of cardamom again – with organic cardamom supplied by the Kerala forest department, according to the TDB.
But such mandatory checks are absent for cardamom sold and used in India’s domestic market – even while cardamom meant for export is now routinely tested for excess pesticide residues following a series of international scandals. With guidance from one of the country’s top scientific experts on cardamom, I submitted assorted samples of retail cardamom that I purchased from five major Indian cities for testing at a laboratory of the government-run Indian Cardamom Research Institute. The testing discovered three pesticides present above the FSSAI’s revised MRLs. My ground reporting from the country’s main cardamom-growing region, in Kerala, uncovered massive failings in regulatory and safety systems around pesticide use. This fits a wider pattern of regulatory problems in the spice trade beyond cardamom as well.
In October 2019, the FSSAI wrote to state officials across the country to flag that a study by the ministry of agriculture had “revealed presence of pesticide residues in food commodities beyond the specified limits in some states.” The agency noted that pesticide residues were detected in close to 20 percent of 23,660 samples tested, and roughly 2 percent of the samples showed residues in excess of MRLs. “The maximum number of residues were detected in the samples of vegetables, fruits and spices,” it said. The FSSAI urged authorities to increase testing and enforcement.
In 2019, imports of Indian cardamom to Saudi Arabia, a major cardamom consumer, were temporarily halted after some consignments were found to have high pesticide residues. Several other countries reportedly followed suit, and Indian cardamom prices plunged. Saudi Arabia and others later allowed imports of Indian cardamom to continue, though it remains under quality restrictions. Qatar, for instance, has since 2021 imposed intensified quality controls on Indian cardamom, including a laboratory certificate for every shipment to show that it is free of unsafe pesticide residues and fit for consumption. In 2022, Qatar rejected 1500 kilogrammes of cardamom from Kerala due to pesticide residues.
Earlier this year, India’s spice trade faced unwelcome scrutiny again after authorities in Hong Kong detected ethylene oxide, a carcinogenic pesticide, in some spice blends marketed by two popular Indian brands. Hong Kong suspended sales of the brands’ products, as did Singapore and Nepal, and numerous other countries announced increased testing of Indian spice imports. India’s ministry of commerce subsequently took pains to emphasise that authorities in Hong Kong and Singapore had recalled some batches of imported spice mixes, and not issued bans on Indian spices. It also stated that Indian officials had taken steps to prevent excess pesticide residues in spices destined for export.
Indian regulators responded by ordering tests and inspections of spice manufacturers, even as the FSSAI faced questions over its decision to raise the MRLs for numerous pesticides. Officials raiding a spice mill in Modinagar, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, found industrial dyes being used to add colour to turmeric and chilli powders.
Without a much larger reckoning over India’s food safety systems and pesticide regulations, many more disturbing revelations lie in store. As I found out in scrutinising cardamom, scandal is often just a test or an inspection away.
“TOURISTS SAY the hills make them light in the head,” a pesticide sprayer in Idukki’s Cardamom Hill Reserve told me in April, when I tagged along for a day in the field to see him at work. “They assume it is the clean and misty mountain air.”
“But really, it’s just that somebody would have sprayed pesticides the previous day,” a farmer whose land the sprayer was working on that day cut in to say, bursting into laughter.
The Cardamom Hill Reserve is the primary area for the cultivation of green cardamom in India. Green cardamom, also called small cardamom, is in wide use as a culinary spice, particularly in the Subcontinent and West Asia. (A separate type with a distinct flavour, black cardamom, is also widely consumed.) Green cardamom is among the most expensive spices – maximum prices at auction in Idukki last year rose close to INR 3000, or USD 35, per kilogramme – earning it the nickname “green gold”.
India is one of the top global producers of green cardamom, second only to the Central American country of Guatemala, where the spice was introduced from India. Kerala accounts for the vast majority of Indian production, and Idukki – particularly the Cardamom Hill Reserve – grows almost all of the state’s green cardamom, accounting for well over 80 percent of Indian production in total. This cardamom is considered superior to Guatemalan cardamom owing to a stronger aroma and higher content of essential oils, and fetches a higher price.
Green cardamom is native to the Western Ghats of southern India, where it was earlier collected from the wild. Its commercialisation dates to at least 1822, when the erstwhile kingdom of Travancore demarcated its native habitat as the Cardamom Hills, or Yela Mala. Later, the demarcation of the Cardamom Hill Reserve signalled a policy of promoting cardamom cultivation.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are by far the world’s largest importers of the spice. In 2021–22, India’s exports of green cardamom were valued at approximately INR 1375 crore – roughly USD 185 million – translating to considerable returns for the 41,000 or so farmers growing cardamom in Idukki. But these returns come at the cost of intensive monocropping.
“Cardamom is one of the most pesticide-consuming crops in the world,” Murugan Muthusamy, the head of the Cardamom Research Station in Pampadumpara, in the Cardamom Hill Reserve, said. Cardamom was originally cultivated as a low-intensity crop, but this is no longer the case. “Earlier 1000 plants were planted per hectare, but now 1600 plants are being grown per hectare,” Murugan explained. And pesticide usage “has increased by at least 40 percent in the last ten years.”
Cultivation in the Cardamom Hill Reserve has long been dominated by migrant settlers. “Seventy percent of cardamom farmers are small and medium landholders, with less than five hectares,” Murugan said. For these farmers, cardamom and its profits have become an obsession. “A good season’s harvest is enough to settle a family’s debts,” a smallholder from Pampadumpara, in the Cardamom Hill Reserve, said. He started life with no inherited wealth and worked as an autorickshaw driver. He invested his earnings in a plot of less than half an acre and began to grow cardamom. He now owns a small house, two autorickshaws, a jeep, a motorcycle and some additional land.
“You have to look after each plant like you care for a child,” the smallholder said – a line often repeated across the Cardamom Hill Reserve. Wild varieties have been discarded for newer, high-yield varieties. A prime example is the Njallani variety, which, unlike shade-loving wild cardamom, responds well to sunlight and additional inputs such as fertilisers. But this comes with its own complications: the excessive dependence on high-yield varieties and the resulting pressure to reduce shade resulted in widespread crop losses this summer, which was drier than usual.
The Cardamom Hill Reserve “is the only place globally where cardamom is grown as a monocrop at such scale,” Murugan said. And that invites all the problems associated with monocrop agriculture, including massive susceptibility to pests and pathogens. Major pests include stemborers and cardamom thrips. Fungal diseases such as capsule rot, rhizome rot, seedling rot, leaf blight and leaf blotch are common. Farmers’ response has been the sumptuous use of pesticides, leaving the Cardamom Hill Reserve dripping with poison.
“While seven rounds of spraying are recommended in cardamom farming, up to 15 to 20 rounds are being done every year,” Murugan explained of the intensity of pesticide use in cardamom cultivation today. “Additionally, up to nine rounds of insecticides are applied to protect against bud-eating insects and borers.”
“Cardamom has the third most pesticide usage after cotton and chilli,” A D Dileep Kumar, the CEO of the Pesticide Action Network, said. He added that farmers are being trapped by a network of pesticide distributors and retailers who they later grow dependent on. Sprayers like the one I shadowed play a significant role in this.
When I tagged along with the sprayer in April, he said he had been in this line of work for more than 20 years, spraying pesticides on cardamom plantations. Unlike tourists who get light-headed from pesticides, he said, “those from Idukki don’t feel any problems.”
“We have at least 3000 products to choose from,” the sprayer said. “I don’t know all their names. But I try them out from the shops and based on feedback recommend to farmers what to spray next.”
At the start of the day, the sprayer set off in his car, taking along two assistants – one a local Tamil labourer and another a migrant worker recently arrived from West Bengal. At the day’s first plot, measuring some two acres, the sprayer prepared a pesticide mix in 200-litre drums, and the assistants took turns to swiftly spray the length of each cardamom plant shooting up some eight or nine feet on the slopes. None of them wore masks or any other covering over their mouths and noses. While his assistants wore shoes, the sprayer worked in slippers.
“They recommend wearing boots, masks and a whole lot of stuff, like what health workers used when handling Covid-19 patients,” the sprayer said, referring to hazmat suits. “But you can’t work even for five minutes in the heat wearing all that. They restrict vision and movement, making it risky to move around on the hilly slopes.”
To prepare the spraying mix at the second farm he was working on that day, the sprayer emptied into a bucket one bottle of Imidacloprid 17.8% SL – a Neonicotinoid group systemic insecticide. He also added a bottle of Larvi Plus, a larvicide with no labels, and then threw in, as he had done at the previous farm, a clear liquid which he described as an organic product. While the bottle of Imidacloprid had labels that recommended dosage, it is not approved for application on cardamom; the label showed that Imidacloprid is approved for use only on paddy, cotton, chillies, sugarcane and mango. Even so, it is widely used in the Cardamom Hills.
A pesticide label, or label claim, displays information approved by India’s Central Insecticides Board and Registration Committee, with instructions for the safe and judicious use of a product. This includes such details as the active ingredients, targeted pests, intended crop or crops, and optimum dosages.
“The optimum dosages to be used are arrived at by companies based on the pesticide residue data generated by conducting multi-location supervised field trials in different agroclimatic zones,” an agricultural officer who has worked in the Cardamom Hill Reserve told me, requesting anonymity. Such data also determines a safe waiting period – a minimum number of days between final spraying and harvest – following the use of defined dosages of particular pesticides on particular crops. These waiting periods are meant to ensure that pesticide residues do not end up in food products at levels above MRLs.
“At least 60 different pesticides are used in the cardamom growth cycle in the Cardamom Hill Reserve,” Murugan said. But only two fungicide formulations – Copper Oxychloride 50% and Fosetyl-Aluminium 80% WP – and three insecticides – Monocrotophos 36% SL, Diafenthiuron 50% WP and Quinalphos 25% EC – have label claims for use on small cardamom. And even these pesticides are among the most problematic ones out there.
Monocrotophos and Diafenthiuron were responsible for deaths from pesticide poisoning in Yavatmal, in the state of Maharashtra, in 2017. Monocrotophos, an organophosphate insecticide acutely toxic to birds and humans, is considered a red-label pesticide – a class of substances that are highly toxic based on either oral, dermal or inhalation exposure. Monocrotophos is banned in well over a hundred countries. In India, the government ordered in October 2023 that the use of monocrotophos be completely discontinued, expanding on an earlier ban on the use of the insecticide in vegetable cultivation.
Diafenthiuron is banned in Switzerland and the European Union. Quinalphos is banned in 30 countries, and is already banned from use on jute, cardamom and sorghum in India.
“This is a big issue,” a senior scientist formerly with the Indian Institute of Spices Research said. Off-label, or non-approved, use of pesticides is widely prevalent in cardamom cultivation. “Companies are not applying for label claims,” the scientist explained. “There is no way to force them.” And, he said, “There is no way to enforce the label claim requirements on farms either.”
This means it is left up to farmers, sprayers and pesticide vendors to decide what pesticides to use and in what dosages – often based on individual preference. “The pesticide shopkeepers are like the scientists here,” a cardamom smallholder from Thankamani told me. “We follow what they say and apply chemicals as recommended by them.” At times, he added, the sprayers suggest what to use – although the smallholder and his family usually apply pesticides themselves to keep costs down.
Before packing up and leaving the farms he sprayed, the sprayer introduced the farmers to the mystery product he had added into the spraying mixes that day. He took a piece of cardboard and poured a palmful of water over one half of it. Then he mixed the product with water and poured a few drops of the mix onto the other half. In a few minutes, while the half soaked in just water remained intact, the half with the mix had lost shape and become pulp-like.
“See, this helps the other chemicals to be absorbed quickly without being wasted,” the sprayer told one farmer. “It is organic.” The product, an activator-wetter-spreader, is used to improve the coverage of pesticides and foliar fertiliser sprays while increasing water penetration. The product was newly launched, the sprayer said, and he could supply it. As he settled payment, he offered each farmer a discount on the bottle.
“They say this is organic – made from seaweed,” the sprayer later explained. On its website, the product’s manufacturer, Keva Kaipo Industries, describes it as “biodegradable” and “not a pesticide”. Direct sale to end-users by sprayers or similar intermediaries is prohibited. Two agricultural officers said that any sale has to be at a shop from a licensed dealer – even if, as the product’s bottle claims, its active constituents are exempt from licensing.
The sprayer said he was part of a multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme to market the product – an often controversial model where individuals earn money both from selling a product themselves and from commissions on the earnings of others they recruit to join the chain. He introduced me to two others who were also part of the scheme, and to someone they identified as the head of the MLM chain for Idukki. This was not the first brand whose products they had helped market in this way: they said they had marketed at least four other brands with MLM schemes earlier. The trick to making money, they said, is to enter early, so that you sit high in the commission chain.
I emailed questions to Keva Kaipo Industries but did not receive any reply. I also did not get any response to questions sent to manufacturers of the pesticides I saw being applied to cardamom, including those used in violation of label indications.
THERE IS MUCH money to be made selling pesticides, especially in Idukki. According to the farmers I spoke to, a cardamom crop incurs an expense in pesticides and fertilisers of at least INR 10,000 per acre per month, or roughly USD 120 – a considerable amount in a country where a monthly salary of INR 25,000 puts you among the top ten percent of wage earners.
In one recent study, researchers calculated that cardamom consumes 26.2 kilogrammes of pesticides per hectare per year. By a rough calculation, with around 38,000 hectares under cardamom cultivation in Idukki according to a local agricultural officer, this translates to an annual pesticide consumption of approximately 1000 tonnes. Such intensive use has helped productivity in Idukki increase from 246 kilogrammes per hectare in 2002–03 to 637 kilogrammes per hectare in 2020–21. The district’s total cardamom production more than doubled over this period, rising from roughly 8000 tonnes to almost 20,000 tonnes.
Idukki has 458 retail pesticide dealers, according to Kerala’s department of agriculture, and 32 pesticide wholesalers. In effect, the pesticide trade functions here with almost no regulation.
“I once inspected a pesticide shop near my Krishi Bhavan during a lunch break,” an agricultural officer recalled of his time posted in the Cardamom Hills. Krishi Bhavans, present across the country, are local offices of the agriculture department, each headed by an agricultural officer. “But before I could get back to my office across the road, I got a call from a state-level politician holding elected office telling me to stay within my limits,” the agricultural officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “I hadn’t even found anything illegal to act on. Just imagine the pressure we work under.”
Such inspections are not agricultural officers’ primary responsibility. “First and foremost, we are a fund-dispersing body,” the agricultural officer said of Krishi Bhavans’ work. The main job is to identify the intended beneficiaries of official schemes and see that they are implemented. But there are also additional charges and duties. Agricultural officers are often also given the role of insecticide inspectors, which on paper requires that they conduct shop inspections.
Agricultural officers also make recommendations for the issuance or renewal of licences for retail pesticide shops. “There is immense political pressure when it comes to issuing new pesticide shop licences,” the agricultural officer said.
Massive numbers of pesticide shops are now normal across Idukki. “In 1993–94, there were just three pesticide shops in Nedumkandam,” Murugan said. As of April 2024, the town of Nedumkandam had 42, according to figures from the Kerala agriculture department. I found pesticide shops inside the town’s bus stand, lined up all along the main road, and occupying shopfronts adjacent to busy restaurants.
“Idukki has a lot of demand,” the officer-in-charge of the Krishi Bhavan in Nedumkandam said. “So, many shops are needed here.” He waved away any concerns about licensing. “It is not easy to get a pesticide shop licence,” he said. “There are building suitability requirements and a whole lot of other paperwork to be completed to be eligible.”
I asked about the MLM scheme I had seen, and about the product that the sprayer I shadowed had described as an organism activator-wetter-spreader. “Only storefront sales are allowed and it is the same for organic products as well,” the officer in charge said. “Only licensed shops can sell pesticides and only those for which they hold licences. Misbranded pesticides or selling of pesticides without licence to sell is not permitted. We conduct periodic surveys to see if such products are sold.”
Right across the road from his office, I found a retail shop selling Monocrotophos 36% SL, the red-label pesticide for which, the officer told me, no licence had been issued across Kerala. Koshaa Agro Chemicals, the company which marketed the product, did not figure in the current ‘Source of import and list of indigenous manufacturers of insecticides’, updated on 1 May 2024, or in the earlier ‘Source of import’ list updated on 1 June 2023. These official lists, maintained by the Directorate of Plant Protection, Quarantine and Storage, name all authorised manufacturers and importers of pesticides in India. I did not receive any response to questions sent to Koshaa Agro Chemicals.
When I asked for Phorate, another banned pesticide, I was told the shop could supply an alternative – Furadan, the brand name for Carbofuran, a pesticide formulation banned from import, manufacture and use in India, as it is in many other countries. The shop attendants did not specify the manufacturer or distribution source of this product.
“There are newer chemicals arriving every other day,” the sprayer I shadowed told me. “The older ones had a charm of their own and gave longer protection.” He listed some of the chemicals he felt nostalgic for. Among them were endosulfan and DDT, both notoriously toxic and long banned.
“There are agents who can deliver any banned pesticide at the farms,” a smallholder from Pazhayarikandam said. “These pesticides are sold under different brand names and are effective.” Their use is common across plantations, the farmer said. Pesticides not licensed for sale in Kerala are often brought in from the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu, agricultural officers in the Cardamom Hills said. This includes pesticides that are ostensibly banned in Tamil Nadu too.
“We cannot regulate the pesticides coming from Tamil Nadu,” an agricultural officer presently posted inside the Cardamom Hill Reserve said. Another officer, who was previously posted there, said, “We do not have checkposts at the state border to check whether pesticides are being brought in.”
“THERE IS NO OTHER process involved with cardamom other than drying, sorting and packing,” a cardamom exporter and trader in Bodinayakanur, across the state border in Tamil Nadu, said. The town has been a hub of the cardamom trade since back when the spice was still collected wild in the Western Ghats.
Drying is a simple process where hot air from wood fires or electric dryers is passed over raw green cardamom for 12 to 14 hours. As it loses moisture, a kilogramme of raw cardamom yields around 200 grammes of dry cardamom. Farmers sell their product to traders directly or enter it for auction. Traders examine samples to determine quality before naming their price for a batch.
“After sorting each batch according to capsule size and colour, we pack them off in bags of 50 kilos for traders in Mumbai, Delhi and Nagpur,” the trader said. Most of India’s domestic cardamom consumption is in its northern states. “The wholesalers repackage them further into packs of one kilo or two kilos, which are then further repackaged into smaller packs to be sold for retail sale.” Testing is not mandatory at any point for cardamom destined for the domestic market. “For export purposes, traders get the samples tested for pesticide residue to avoid getting rejected,” the trader explained.
“We do take market samples of spices every year at the district level,” Jose Lawrence, an assistant commissioner of food safety for Idukki, said. “If they fail, sample owners are given notice.” The FSSAI is empowered to do the same across the country. But the traders I spoke to were not aware of anyone ever getting such notice for cardamom sold domestically. “In India, we aren’t worried about these things,” the exporter in Bodinayakanur said.
I emailed a range of questions to the Kerala agriculture department, the Central Insecticides Board and Registration Committee, India’s agriculture ministry, the FSSAI, and the Spices Board – the official regulatory and promotion agency for India’s spice trade. The questions covered a range of issues including pesticide overuse in cardamom production, regulation and oversight of pesticide sales, and the control of pesticide residues in the Indian domestic market. I did not receive any replies in time for the publication of this story.
“Acute cases of pesticide poisoning are very rare,” Prashanth V, a medical officer at a primary health centre in the Cardamom Hill Reserve, said. Generally, sprayers “have issues such as contact dermatitis and breathing problems, which result from long-term exposure.” Yet, Prashanth said, people are not aware that these problems are caused by continuous exposure to pesticides.
“Studies have shown that people who come into direct or indirect contact with pesticides often have a higher occurrence of depression and mood disorders,” Prashanth added. “This is reflected here in a higher rate of suicide attempts. It needs to be studied more.”
“We have seen a two-fold higher prevalence of diabetes among rural people exposed to pesticides,” the scientist Velmurugan Ganesan said. A 2017 study led by Velmurugan showed a high rate of diabetes among rural Indians directly exposed to organophosphates. Another study led by him, published in 2021, found a strong association between diabetes prevalence and the occupational use of agrochemicals. “Ten or twenty years back, diabetes was a rich man’s disease,” Velmurugan said. “But now, increasingly, rural people without obesity, hypertension or high cholesterol are showing diabetes.”
This is an understudied facet of India’s diabetes epidemic, which affects more than 100 million people across the country. Pesticide exposure and overuse is hardly confined to the Cardamom Hill Reserve. While Idukki counts 458 points of distribution for pesticides, and Kerala as a whole roughly 1900, these figures are dwarfed by the roughly 23,000 in Gujarat, more than 35,500 in Maharashtra and more than 55,500 in Uttar Pradesh.
In 2011, following years of protests by victims of endosulfan poisoning and their families, Kerala made a quixotic attempt to rein in pesticide use, declaring a ban on all red-label pesticides. The state government also said that farmers looking to purchase pesticides would need specific prescriptions from agricultural officers. The scheme was destined to fail, not least because agricultural officers were already overstretched. More importantly, under India’s federal system, states have limited powers to ban particular pesticides – the central government in New Delhi has the real power in this regard – meaning Kerala’s “ban” was more political gesture than actual policy. However, anti-endosulfan activism in Kerala did contribute to an order by the Supreme Court of India in 2011 to ban the production, sale and use of endosulfan across the country. The ban was brought into effect in 2017.
Jess Vergis, an assistant professor at the Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, said that pesticide overuse threatens the health of the environment, humans and also animals, though its full effects often go unnoticed. Vergis is posted as the officer-in-charge at the Centre for One Health Education Advocacy Research and Training at Wayanad, another hub of spice cultivation in the Western Ghats in Kerala. “Pesticide residue is problematic,” Vergis said. “It is problematic for animals as well. We need to remove pesticides from our food systems as they tend to accumulate over time.”
“We are still governed by a law passed in 1968 and rules drafted in 1971,” Dileep Kumar of the Pesticide Action Network said, referring to the Insecticides Act of 1968 and subsequent Insecticide Rules. The senior scientist formerly with the Indian Institute of Spices Research said that the old law “has become redundant as the country and its markets have evolved and pesticide usage patterns have changed.”
In 2020, the government presented a Pesticide Management Bill that would make the manufacture, import, distribution, sale, storage or transport of pesticides without a licence or certificate, as well as any unlicensed pest-control operations, punishable with up to three years of imprisonment or a fine of up to INR 40 lakh, or both. Under the existing act, the punishment is up to two years of imprisonment or a fine of between INR 10,000 and 50,000 for a first offence, and up to three years of imprisonment or a fine of up to INR 75,000 for a repeat offence.
“The new pesticide bill has been put on hold,” the senior scientist said. “Why?” He added that “pesticide companies are very powerful. Even pesticides which were supposed to be banned have been given extensions.”
“It is high time the pesticide bill is passed,” Dileep Kumar said. “Criminal liability must be brought into the system.”
Without that, and no evident effort even to step up the enforcement of existing regulations, it’s business as usual. For the cardamom industry, that is just as well. The cardamom exporter and trader in Bodinayakanur was frank. “If people actually come to realise what they get,” he said, “they will stop buying.”