Urban Bharat's reaction to the Maggi ban

Let’s face it, the Maggi Story has captivated us, all marketing and brand types, and a story in this week’s Times Of India caught my imagination. It’s about how the farmers of Pauri district in Uttarakhand (about 170 kms from Dehradun) are trying to hoard up Maggi. During harvest time these farmers, with families are in the field from the break of dawn and have hardly any time for cooking. So they cook Maggi saag where in all leafy vegetables are cooked with Maggi in minutes. This is their staple lunch. Imagine, farmers hooked on to Maggi!

And not to forget the Maggi Points all along the char dham (pilgrimage routes) roads in Uttarakhand. Maggi has become ubiquitous with food.

Plus the youngsters. Their idea of fast food starts with Maggi. Their idea of cooking ends with Maggi and their idea of a midnight snack is Maggi.

So I decided to do a bit of digging. What does the consumer and the customer of Maggi feel? The customer in this case is the mom who buys and cooks it for the children and the consumer were the youngsters. Let me clarify, this is not a proper research with adequate sample size. I just wanted to get a feel of what the end customer and consumer feel about this controversy.

Let me also confess, I went in with a bias. I expected the mothers to be supporting the ban and the students to be opposing it.

I spoke to a few mothers at my daughter’s tennis academy and in my building complex. To my amazement I found the mother’s having an ambivalent view. While they were categorical that anything dangerous should be banned, they insisted that Maggi was not harmful. And the proof of the pudding lay in their experience. Almost all claimed that they had Maggi when they were young and all of them were healthy with no issues ( Indians concept of healthy is slightly warped, but that is for a different forum!) and same was the case with their children. So why this problem now?

But it was the youth who surprised me the most. I met some at the gym and others at a management institute admission process. They were categorical in supporting the ban. Yes, they would be affected the most by the ban but isn’t it better to be a bit inconvenienced than to eat something poisonous (zehereela was the word used) and chemically bad, was the simple response.

And boy, were they opinionated! They had their facts right. And the knowledge. They knew that the problem is with the taste maker but that does not absolve the noodles. They knew that lead is bad and that anyways our water is polluted with lead. Maybe that’s not in their control but what they eat, is definitely. Some even ventured to say that such a product will never be allowed in the west and Maggi has different formulation there.

Mind you these were regular Maggi consumers. But since the lead content story broke, they have tried to change their diet. Replaced Maggi with eggs and banana and sandwiches. Their conclusion is very simple. Will not eat food which could be poisonous. Not unhealthy, but poisonous. So they are ok with the street food or other fast food but lead, MSG was a definite no. What amazed me was the distinction between unhealthy and poisonous. And how did they get so worldly wise? We are in a digital age, even in Urban Bharat, and though, as I wrote in my previous blog, the youngster rations his digital time, for news and information like this he does log in, extensively.

I did cross check with a few retailers and they verified this. It’s the mothers who are still trying to buy Maggi, but the young Urban Bharat youth is not too keen.

Did this surprise you? Do you have a different experience to narrate? What does the Urban Indian (metro town) youth think? Please do chip in.