26

Aug

GLOBAL STANDARDS : WHY SUCH DISCONNECT, MR PRIME MINISTER?

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Anil Jauhri

New Delhi | Wednesday | August 26, 2026


As a quality professional, one should be delighted that the Prome Minister of the country on the most significant occasions, gives a clarion call for adhering to global standards and stresses world class quality.

Whether one agrees with his politics or not, there is no denying his consistently held position on quality. Beginning with his maiden Independence Day speech in 2014 from the ramparts of the venerable Red Fort, when he spoke about "zero defect zero effect", to his latest speech on the Independence Day this month, where he spoke of global standards, he has been nothing but consistent.

And yet this does not translate into action on the ground?

Why is there such a disconnect?

Why do Ministries after Ministries and government agencies after government agencies create systems which are incompatible global standards?

One can understand that incorporating global standards in domestic technical regulations, be it food or drugs, can be a huge challenge given the large proportion of small and micro enterprises in the country and we are forced to adopt lesser standards out of compulsion. The question here should be - for how long?

But what about voluntary systems which are intended to promote excellence? Why are these pitched below global standards thus bringing less value to the industry if at all?

Let us start with Zero Effect Zero Defect which got translated as ZED scheme by the Ministry of MSME way back in 2016.

What should actually have been a vehicle to demonstrate world class quality and environmental responsibility by the India industry, somehow got confined to MSME sector leaving out a significant chunk of large industry which could have more easily demonstrated compliance to global standard based criteria and show cased India’s industrial prowess regardless of scale.
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Even in its current form, the highest level - Gold - should at least have been compatible with international standards - simply by adopting globally recognized ISO 9001 for quality and ISO 14001 for environment or any sector specific global standard like WHO GMP in pharma or ISO 13485 in medical devices. 

Why this should not have been done is a mystery! If 10 years into the scheme, we can not demand global standards, when would we?

As chairman of the Working Group set up by the Ministry of Ayush to develop what is now known as Ayush Quality Mark Programme, I discovered, much to my chagrin, that the Ayush hospitals standard of the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH) was not globally compatible. Its hospital standard for modern medicine is! So it is not as if NABH is unaware of what global endorsement means. Its Medical value travel facilitators program suffers from the same failing.

Another area which we investigated - education - has a system of rating of Ayush higher educational institutions operated by National Commission for Indian System of Medicine (NCISM) in collaboration with the Quality Council of India. It also lacks global compatibility though at least the highest rating should be able to claim to be global.

The current systems of accreditation of trainings under the aegis of the Yoga Certification Board and Ayurveda Training Accreditation Board also are below global standards although the exercise to create a higher level based on ISO 29993 has been initiated in both and should be in place shortly.

Even the much visible Hallmarking certification of gold jewellery by the Bureau of Indian Standards is globally incompatible. This even though the purity standards are same as world over but the assaying centres which test purity of gold are not accredited to the intentional standard, ISO/IEC 17025. Funnily enough when the programme was launched in late 1990s, accreditation was a requirement for assaying centres!!!

One can cite more examples.

The Bharat GAP certification launched by the Ministry of Agriculture, unless benchmarked globally, will be seen as not global. Same applies to the Pramaan scheme for forest management launched by the Ministry of Environment and Forests. The irony is that in both these cases, these schemes duplicate already available schemes in the market - IndG.A.P. certification by the Quality Council of India which at least for a while was globally endorsed by Global G.A.P. and Forest certification by Network for Certification and Conservation of Forests which is globally benchmarked by the Program for Endorsement of Forest Certification. The government need not have invested time and money in duplicating existing schemes.

These are only illustrative examples. If the various quality related schemes in the government are scrutinised across sectors, the same situation prevails.

One is reminded of the statement the Prime Minister made in his first speech in Madison Square Garden in New York to the Indian diaspora in September 2014 – ‘that when I came to Delhi I discovered there is not one government of India but there are 60 governments of India and that each Ministry is government of India’. 

Which is so very true as all of us who have dealt with the government realize.

The sorry part is that 12 years later, nothing much seems to have changed.Does India need a central place in government to advise on cross sector policy issues on quality. Indeed, it does.
 

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