India, Aug. 25 -- I was in Mumbai recently to watch a friend take his company public. He began in 2008 and built something India used to import: the propulsion system of a railway engine. That evening, we dined at one of the city's famous hotels. The food was stale. The reason may have been anything - a slow evening, a careless hand. I make no accusation. But my own reaction surprised me: I silently thanked Tukaram Mundhe for tearing down kitchen doors across Maharashtra.

For decades, this country absorbed filth in food as its own standard until the law against it read like a foreign document. It has taken an officer willing to be widely disliked to make us look. Thirty-three years among officers taught me how rare and how costly that wi...