Since 2003, the Indian State has introduced several high profile policy interventions to enhance food safety. Examples concern the Food Safety and Standards Act (July 2006) and a Supreme Court endorsed municipal policy to ban cooking food in Delhi's streets (May 2007). Relatively little is, however, known about either the proc~ss of policy change around food safety policy or the impacts of regulatory regimes on a rapidly proliferating informal food sector in Indian cities. This study thus examines local and national policy change regarding food safety and the informal food sector, and assesses implications for smallscale food retailers. The study investigates the suitability of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), an authoritative approach to analyse policy change in western democracies, for understanding Indian policy processes. The ACF posits that stakeholders influence policy by forming advocacy coalitions that coordinate action based on shared beliefs. Case studies are conducted of policymaking processes of the Government of India and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). The study thus investigates the Food Safety and Standards Act (2096), the National Urban Street Vending Policy (NSVP, 2004), and its implementation in the MCD. The thesis presents evidence that advocacy coalitions exist, and that their cognition of policy problems and solutions is influential in Indian policymaking processes, but argues that political and economic interests remain of analytical importance. The study further considers the role of policy implementation processes, to develop a critique of the ACF. It explores the ways in which policy practices, street level bureaucracies and political society intermediate policy outcomes for small-scale food retailers and connects official regulatory with parallel informal governance regimes. It concludes that Delhi's munidpal food hygiene regulations must be understood in conjunction with parallel processes governing access to public space.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:504843 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Hendrik te Lintelo, Dolf Jan |
| Publisher | University of East Anglia |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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