Manufactured Panic: When fear becomes a business model

Intro:

How anxiety, weakened public systems and regulatory complacency turned necessities into profitable commodities

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear." — H. P. Lovecraft

Fear protects us from danger. But fear also sells.

Modern economies increasingly profit not merely from satisfying human needs but from amplifying concerns surrounding those needs. Water, food and health—once viewed largely as public goods or community responsibilities—have become vast commercial ecosystems built upon reassurance.

This is not because all fears are imaginary. Contaminated water, adulterated food and public-health failures are real concerns. Yet when anxiety itself becomes marketable, powerful incentives emerge to keep that anxiety alive.

The result is a form of consumerism in which fear generates recurring revenue.

When a Crisis Reshapes an Entire Market

India witnessed one of the clearest examples during the 1998 dropsy outbreak in Delhi. The tragedy was eventually traced to mustard oil adulterated with argemone oil by criminal operators.

The lesson should have been about adulteration and enforcement.

Instead, public perception shifted more broadly. Loose edible oils became suspect. Branded and packaged alternatives gained legitimacy. Traditional local oil-extraction systems steadily lost ground.

The outcome was a profound restructuring of the market. Consumer trust moved away from neighbourhood producers and towards large industrial brands.

That pattern has since repeated itself across multiple sectors.

The Business of Purity

Few examples are more visible than drinking water.

India's packaged-water market today is estimated at roughly Rs70,000–80,000 crore annually, while the global market runs into hundreds of billions of dollars. The industry's success rests upon a simple proposition: public water may be uncertain, but branded water promises safety.

The same logic drives the domestic water-purifier industry, now valued at well over ₹20,000 crore. The business does not end with the initial purchase. Filters, maintenance contracts and periodic upgrades create a steady stream of recurring income.

Interestingly, the enthusiasm for household RO systems differs sharply from that seen in much of Europe. Where citizens generally trust municipal water systems, advanced domestic purification remains a niche product. In India, where confidence in public supply is often weaker, purification has become a near-essential household expense.

The relationship is difficult to miss: declining trust creates expanding markets.

The Edible Oil Story

The edible-oil sector tells a similar story.

India's market now exceeds Rs2 lakh crore annually. Yet what consumers are encouraged to fear has changed repeatedly over the decades.

At one time, traditional oils were portrayed as outdated and unhealthy. Refined oils represented scientific progress. Today, many consumers are abandoning refined products in favour of cold-pressed and traditional alternatives, often paying several times more for them.

One of the most striking developments has been the increasing dominance of palm oil.

Palm oil became commercially attractive because it was cheap, versatile and profitable. It found its way into countless food products and oil blends. Yet concerns regarding excessive consumption of highly processed oils and their potential association with cardiovascular risks have continued to generate debate among nutritionists and public-health researchers.

The irony is difficult to ignore. Traditional dietary practices were frequently dismissed in favour of industrial alternatives, only for consumers to be encouraged years later to pay premium prices to return to what their grandparents used.

Fear moved the market in both directions.

When Molecules Suddenly Acquire a Birthday

Perhaps the most overlooked example of anxiety-driven consumerism lies in the modern obsession with expiry dates.

Of course, certain products genuinely deteriorate. Fresh food spoils. Medicines can lose potency. Biological materials degrade.

Yet the broader culture surrounding expiry dates often ignores basic scientific reality.

Had molecules behaved according to the logic implied by some marketing practices, the physical world would have ceased functioning long ago. Rivers, lakes and oceans would have expired. Mountains would have crumbled into nothingness. Buildings, forests and living ecosystems would have disintegrated simply because their constituent molecules had become "too old".

Matter does not work that way.

Water molecules do not suddenly become unsafe because a date printed on a plastic bottle has arrived. What may degrade is the packaging, storage conditions or product quality—not the age of the molecule itself.

Similarly, many shelf-stable foods remain usable well beyond printed dates if properly stored. The distinction between "best before" and genuine safety risks is frequently lost in public understanding.

The consequence is predictable: perfectly usable products are discarded, replacement purchases increase, and waste grows.

Whether intentional or not, fear of expiry has become an economic force in its own right.

The Regulatory Question

No discussion of these trends can avoid a more uncomfortable question.

Who decides what is safe?

Modern societies rely on regulatory institutions to serve as independent arbiters between public welfare and commercial interests. Their legitimacy depends upon transparency, scientific rigour and public trust.

Yet around the world, concerns about regulatory capture have become increasingly common.

The term describes a situation in which regulators become excessively influenced by the industries they oversee, whether through lobbying, industry representation, revolving-door appointments or disproportionate corporate access.

India has not escaped such debates.

Critics have repeatedly questioned whether food-safety oversight is sufficiently insulated from commercial influence. Concerns have ranged from labelling standards and additive thresholds to pesticide residues and testing protocols.

The issue becomes particularly visible when Indian food products face scrutiny abroad. Recent international actions involving certain Indian spice exports, where foreign regulators raised concerns over ethylene oxide contamination levels, highlighted how different jurisdictions can arrive at very different assessments of acceptable risk.

Such episodes raise uncomfortable questions. If products fail foreign safety thresholds, should domestic consumers expect the same standards applied at home? If testing capabilities differ, how should regulators respond? And how transparent should those responses be?

These are not anti-industry questions. They are pro-accountability questions.

Public confidence depends not upon regulators defending industry, nor upon regulators attacking industry, but upon regulators being visibly independent of it.

When Anxiety Becomes an Economy

Viewed separately, bottled water, water purifiers, premium oils and food-safety certifications appear unrelated.

Viewed together, they reveal a larger pattern.

In India alone, these sectors collectively represent a market worth more than ₹3 lakh crore annually. Globally, the value runs into hundreds of billions of dollars.

Their common denominator is uncertainty.

Fear of contamination. Fear of adulteration. Fear of illness. Fear of institutional failure.

None of these concerns are entirely imaginary. Yet each one creates commercial opportunities. And wherever fear becomes profitable, economic incentives inevitably emerge around sustaining that fear.

Rebuilding Trust

The solution is not to reject markets, science or regulation.

The solution is to strengthen the public institutions that reduce unnecessary anxiety in the first place.

A society that trusts its drinking water does not need to buy reassurance in every bottle. A society that trusts its regulators is less vulnerable to marketing masquerading as science. A society that trusts its food systems is less likely to swing from one nutritional panic to another.

The most valuable public asset is not water, food or infrastructure.

It is trust.

When trust declines, fear fills the vacuum.

And fear, as modern markets have discovered, can be extraordinarily profitable.

(The author is a retired officer of the Indian Information Service and a former Editor-in-Chief of DD News and AIR News (Akashvani), India’s national broadcasters. He has also served as an international media consultant with UNICEF in Nigeria and continues to write on politics, media and ethics.)