>>If they are forced to use steel plates and spoons that is a health and safety nightmare in India.

This is one more of those things which we as current generation kids have grown into.

When I was a kid traditional muslim marriages used glass tumblers in marriage lunches. Which used be rinsed in a common drum by guy who would have barely bathed in a month. I remember we barely used to fall ill in those days. We used to play in mud, eat mangoes plucked from trees, spun out glass sharpened thread for kites, play marbles, eat tamarind from trees and drink from the municipal tap in the playground.

We mixed with dirt and infection is a way our immune systems were trained well.

Today apparently people can't walk across the street without catching cold.

As a anecdote, only recently I visited a house warming ceremony they were only rinsing plates(not washing) after each batch finished eating. To make it worse, people were washing their hands post lunch at the same place they were rinsing. The cafeteria lunch eating sterile programmer in me refused to even eat there. But every other person who was there, including my own family had no problems at all.

Its just a frame of mind.