Cooking Up A Rice Story?

None of the lab reports across the country have found plastic in rice samples. Bangalore researchers’ exhaustive analysis concluded the so-called plastic rice is not plastic after all; it’s just plain bad rice says Samantha Machado (Twitter: @ SamanthaMachado)

- Samantha Machado

Like she does every day, Maria a homemaker in Bangalore, boiled two cups of rice for lunch on the afternoon of June 12.

However, when she removed the lid of the utensil, she was shocked to see a distinct, translucent layer instead of the usual starchy water. Upon touching, it felt like a thin sheet of plastic.

The 30-year-old, who was reluctant to share her full name, told Karnataka Today that it alarmed her and she promptly returned the 10 kg pack of the rice to the store she had bought it from in Lingarajpuram. Maria’s happens to be one of the many such cases reported in the state.

Of late, rumours of plastic rice having entered Indian markets have gained strength. A week before Maria, a resident of Mumbai’s posh Lokhandwala locality had complained that she had got fake rice from a supermarket after the boiled rice smelt different and was not tender. “When I made balls out of that rice, the balls bounced like pingpong balls,” media reports quoted her as saying.

Videos have surfaced on Facebook too, with people demonstrating how lumps of rice are bouncing off hard surfaces like a sports ball.

As such reports began emerging from Karnataka and became a topic of debate for print and broadcast media alike, the Legislative Assembly discussed the issue and on June 9, Karnataka Health and Family Welfare Department ordered a probe. Rice samples from Mandya, Ramanagara and Koppal districts were sent to the Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), Mysore, for examination.