Stall owners in the soup after maggi ban

A native of Rajasthan, who migrated to Ahmedabad in search of better living, Kailash vividly remembers the day when Maggi was banned. “On June 4, the health department came asking us not to sell Maggi from the next day. We were all shocked. The next day, I sent 192 packets of Maggi back to Nestle. There were 13 stalls near CEPT, of which I am the only one who has started a new stall. The rest went back to their native places to do farming.”

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Apart from Kailash, the only other stall on the same stretch is a stall selling idlis. He shudders while recalling the phase during which he was unemployed. “I was unemployed for a week and didn’t have any source of income. It was very difficult when there is only a single earning member in a family of four. I decided to start earning somehow, and decided to sell paranthas instead of Maggi.” He sells eight different kinds of paranthas in his stall. When asked about the problems that he faces,because of the change in the menu he said, “The list is endless. We don’t have the same frequency of customers now. There are less of them so the profit has come down. We have to go to far off places to get vegetables early in the morning. Everyday we suffer a loss of Rs 100-150, because we have to throw the leftover parantha stuffing and curd. When we were Maggi waala’s, we used to earn Rs 30,000 per month, and now we manage Rs 20,000 per month”. “Will Maggi ever make a comeback,” asks Kailash as he gets busy with work in his stall that opens at 7:30 am and runs late into the night.

The students who used to frequent this street feel equally sour about the ban. Abhi Sanghani, a student working as an intern in CEPT said, “We all have been eating Maggi here since we joined the college an was a hit among the students. It was banned because of high lead content but cigarette are still sold freely.”