The Hindu argues that India's double burden of malnutrition — persistent undernutrition alongside rapidly rising obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases — demands decisive fiscal and regulatory action, including a dedicated health tax on HFSS (High Fat, Sugar and Salt) foods and mandatory front-of-pack nutrition labelling.

• Parliamentary Standing Committee on Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution: Recommended mandatory front-of-pack nutrition labelling (FOPL) for packaged foods, specifically indicating whether products are high in sugar. Also recommended disclosure of sugar content in baby foods — targeting excess sugar consumption at its earliest stage.
• 'Let's Fix Our Food' Consortium: A national consortium led by ICMR-NIN and comprising prominent domestic and international health institutions, which has recommended: (i) a health tax on HFSS foods; (ii) stricter regulation of marketing of unhealthy foods, particularly to children; (iii) mandatory FOPL; and (iv) a healthier school food environment.

Figure 1 — The Four-Pillar HFSS Food Policy Response

The ICMR-NIN consortium's four-pillar framework mirrors the WHO's "best buy" NCD interventions — fiscal measures, marketing restrictions, labelling mandates and institutional environment changes act in combination, not isolation.

• Colombia (2023): A 'junk food law' introduced an additional tax on packaged HFSS foods — 10% in Year 1, 15% in Year 2, 20% in Year 3 — creating a graduated deterrent that allows industry adaptation while progressively raising the price of unhealthy choices.
• Mexico (2014): Introduced an 8% tax on non-basic foods with energy density exceeding 275 kcal/100g — considered one of the best-studied HFSS taxes globally; early evidence showed measurable purchase reduction, especially among lower-income households.
• Sugar-specific taxes: Norway, Hungary, Denmark, Bermuda, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and the Navajo Nation (U.S.) have each implemented taxes on sugar or sugar-added foods. WHO reports that at least 133 countries have introduced or increased a health tax on unhealthy foods since 2017.
• UK Sugar Levy (2018): The Soft Drinks Industry Levy targeted beverages with added sugar — notably, manufacturers reduced sugar content in products ahead of the levy coming into force, demonstrating that the anticipatory effect of taxation can itself drive reformulation.

• FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India): Established under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, FSSAI is the nodal body for food labelling, standards and regulation. Existing labelling rules (Food Safety and Standards (Labelling & Display) Regulations, 2020) require nutritional information on packs but do not mandate front-of-pack warning labels.
• GST framework: Under the current GST regime, most packaged foods are taxed at 12–18%; a targeted HFSS surcharge would require either a new cess or a restructuring of GST slabs — the latter requiring GST Council approval, making the political economy of such reform significant.
• Advertising regulation: The Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act and the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) codes currently govern food advertising, but enforcement is limited and self-regulatory mechanisms have proven insufficient to restrict child-directed marketing of HFSS products.
• Consumer Protection Act, 2019: Provides a framework for action against misleading advertisements and for protecting consumers from deceptive nutritional claims — a legal hook that can be used alongside FSSAI labelling mandates.

• Regressive taxation risk: HFSS taxes, if applied uniformly, can be regressive — low-income households spend a higher share of income on food, and cheap processed foods often fill caloric gaps. Poorly designed taxes can reduce food security among the poor even while addressing obesity among the affluent. Targeted exemptions and revenue recycling toward nutrition programmes are essential design features.
• FOPL design debate: The form of front-of-pack labelling matters enormously. Warning labels (as used in Chile and Mexico) demonstrably reduce consumer purchase of flagged products; Guideline Daily Amount (GDA) labels (currently favoured by industry) require numerical literacy and are far less effective at driving behaviour change at the point of purchase.
• Implementation gaps: FSSAI's regulatory capacity, particularly for enforcement at the State level and across informal food vendors, remains limited. Labelling mandates without enforcement create paper compliance rather than real change.
• Political economy: The food processing industry is a significant employer and an important source of GST revenue. Industry lobbying has historically delayed FOPL implementation; a mandatory HFSS tax faces similar headwinds.
• School environment gap: India lacks binding national standards for food sold within school premises (canteens, tuck shops, nearby vendors). The consortium's recommendation for a healthier school food environment fills a significant regulatory lacuna.

The author — a senior cybercrime officer — argues that the structural asymmetry between an anonymous sender and an uninformed receiver lies at the root of digital fraud and misinformation, and proposes recognition of a fundamental "right to know the contactor" as the next milestone in digital civilisation.

Figure 3 — The Anonymity–Transparency Balance in Digital Communication

The article's central tension: anonymity is a legitimate privacy right when a person receives communication, but shifts into a potentially abusive shield when a person initiates contact with a stranger — especially to seek their trust, money or personal information.

• The author draws a precise conceptual distinction: privacy is the right to control what others know about you; anonymity is the absence of any identifiable presence. These are not synonymous.
• Every individual has the right to decline communication — but once someone chooses to initiate contact to seek another's attention, trust, money or personal information, the ethical balance shifts. The recipient acquires a corresponding right to know who is reaching out.
• The "right to know the contactor" would require that whenever someone voluntarily initiates communication through any medium, the recipient has access to reliable, verified information about the sender's identity — subject only to narrowly defined legal exceptions (e.g., lawful surveillance, witness protection, journalistic source protection).
• This is not surveillance — it is universal authenticity at the point of initiation, not pervasive monitoring of all digital behaviour.

• Information asymmetry: In every fraudulent digital interaction, the sender knows exactly who they are — the receiver knows almost nothing. Cybercriminals have built a global underground economy by exploiting this gap, targeting children, older adults and first-time internet users who lack the digital literacy to detect sophisticated deception.
• Trust erosion: Repeated encounters with anonymous fraud erode trust not just in scammers but in digital communication itself — damaging legitimate businesses, charities, researchers and public institutions that also communicate digitally.
• Misinformation amplification: Anonymous social media accounts are disproportionately responsible for the spread of viral misinformation; the absence of identity accountability reduces the social and legal cost of false communication.

• IT Act, 2000 (amended 2008): Section 66C (identity theft) and 66D (cheating by personation using computer resources) criminalise identity-based fraud after the fact — but do not proactively require identity disclosure before communication is initiated.
• Telecom Act, 2023: The new Telecommunications Act provides TRAI with broader powers over spam and unsolicited communication, and empowers the government to require caller identity disclosure — a potential legislative hook for the right the author proposes.
• DPDPA, 2023: Requires data fiduciaries to identify themselves when collecting personal data — a limited, sector-specific step in the right direction.
• AI and deepfake challenge: Advances in voice cloning and video deepfakes mean that even when a caller appears identifiable, verification of authenticity is becoming technically harder — underscoring the need for cryptographically secured digital identity verification rather than mere visual or auditory identification.

• Civil liberties tension: Mandatory identity disclosure in initiated communications could chill legitimate anonymous speech — including whistleblowing, political dissent, domestic violence survivor outreach and investigative journalism. Any legal framework must define exceptions with precision and subject them to judicial oversight.
• Technical feasibility: Cryptographic identity authentication (as deployed in PKI systems, digital certificates and eIDAS in the EU) is technically mature. The challenge is not capability but political will and institutional design — particularly for cross-border communications where enforcement jurisdiction is fragmented.
• State power risk: A right to know the contactor, if poorly implemented, could become a surveillance tool: governments that can mandate identity disclosure in private communications can also access those disclosures. Safeguards against government overreach are as important as safeguards against criminal anonymity.