Soon, only listed traders to sell toys

To regulate toy trade in India, the government is contemplating mandatory registration of toy manufacturers and a safety standard.

Updated on: Jul 8, 2010, 24:07:12 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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To regulate toy trade in India, the government is contemplating mandatory registration of toy manufacturers and a safety standard.

Some NGOs such as Centre for Science and Environment and Toxic Link found chemicals such as phthalates and lead in toys, which are said to be harmful for children.

A large number of such toxic toys are coming from China in absence of any regulation. In a first step to have some regulation, the commerce ministry has come out with draft regulations on registration of toy traders in India.

"We have sought toy industry's comments on new regulations," said a senior government official, expecting the registration to be made mandatory by early next year. The registration will help the government to know what type of toys are coming into India as registered owners will have to keep an inventory of the toys traded by them.

"Registration is just an administrative step," said Ravi Aggarwal of Toxic Link, which in its 2007 study found lead in toys imported from China. "The need is to make out toy industry competitive in the international market and that can happen only if we have good safety standards." About 97 per cent of toy trade worth $ 100 billion is with the Chinese firms.

The draft regulation touches upon the safety issues by saying that toys being sold in India should meet government's safety standards, which so far are voluntary in nature. "

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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