The last 50 to 70 years have been witness to a troubling trend: the number of farmers in many Western countries has diminished steadily, sometimes at an alarming rate. In Italy and Ireland, the share of the labour force in agriculture has reduced from 33% and 37%, respectively, in 1950 to less than 5% now. In Poland, this figure has plunged from 57% in 1950 to less than 10% now. (Data derived from Remembering Peasants: A Personal History of a Vanished World, a 2023 book on European farming by Patrick Joyce.)

In several countries, the exit of farmers from the agricultural economy peaked around the 1970s and ’80s. In the US, around the time of Ronald Reagan’s presidency (1981-89), it was estimated that American farmers were going out of business at the rate of one every eight minutes. According to the British environmental journal The Ecologist (1970-2009), most of these former cultivators who had to leave farming were small farmers. In the UK, the number of farms fell from 4,54,000 to 2,43,000 within less than three decades, from 1953 to 1981.

In most cases, this loss of farmers globally has been tied to factors such as over-mechanisation, increasing expenses resulting in growing debts, and a deliberate pursuit of policies by the authorities that favoured the concentration of land and capital while being unfavourable to small farmers. In the UK, pesticide costs alone had increased 10 times from the early 1970s to early 1991. A British farmer in the early 1970s needed 15 cows to make a living; in the 1980s, he needed 75 dairy cows to make the same amount of money. The situation became financially untenable, prompting the farmers to abandon farming entirely. Others continued to slip further into debt. According to data from The Ecologist, by 1991, 70% of the net farm income would be used to pay off debts.

While such farmers left farming rather sadly and with great reluctance, the situation has been interpreted differently by big business interests and corporations. Per them, food and farm produce availability for these countries were not impacted, despite the mass farmer exodus. This was construed as the farmers not being productively employed, which means their exit from farming has ultimately led to a gain for the economy.

This is a highly flawed argument, which ignores how the new model of vast monoculture farms that took root in the latter half of the 20th century employed—or rather mined—ecologically destructive ways by using heavy machinery, excessive fossil fuels and hazardous agrochemicals. It is incapable of sustainability and producing food that will boost health. The soil is mined to somehow yield maximum output in the short term, which means the organic content of the soil cannot be protected for sustainability.

Replicating the same trends could be particularly dangerous for economies in the global South, especially agrarian ones. These economies’ capacity to absorb displaced farmers is significantly less than in the global North.

Also read: It takes a village: Transforming the fate of unproductive land

Need for small farmers and family farms

For countries like India, the more beneficial model would be ​​for families to retain their farms in order to earn their primary livelihood. One or more members can then take up additional full-time or part-time work, especially during lean seasons. Government schemes, like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), can help achieve this. Gandhi’s emphasis on village-level agro-processing and developing other cottage and village industries also fits this vision. Small-scale farmers and family farms are also indispensable to the protection of soil; only they can care for plants and crops in ways that assure optimum yield in sustainable ways.

In 2001, India had 127.3 million land-owning farmers, which dropped to 118.7 million in 2011 as per census data. The number of land-owning farmers dropped by 8.6 million within a decade. This means that about 100 farmers left farming behind every hour (or about 2,400 per day) through this decade or were rendered landless. Needless to say, most of them were small farmers.

This was unfortunate, as one of our foremost priorities should be strengthening small farmers and family farms. A large majority of Indian farmers are small farmers, mostly working on family farms with important contributions by women. Although data can differ depending on how small farmers are defined, broadly it can be said that although nearly three-fourths of our farmers are small farmers, they own only about half of the total land. And despite the difficulties and constraints faced by them in various contexts, they manage to contribute to almost half of the total food production in the country.

About 100 farmers left farming behind every hour (or about 2,400 per day) through this decade or were rendered landless. Needless to say, most of them were small farmers.

One of the most important ways to empower small farmers is to reduce their cash expenses, which will also bring down their debts and save their lands. This can be done by making the best possible use of local free resources—which can be taken forward in various variants of natural farming in tune with local conditions. Many small farmers have proved with their highly creative approaches and dedication that the availability of healthy and diverse food can be accomplished while reducing their expenses and simultaneously protecting the soil, and economising on water use.

This approach calls for constant learning, including practising mutually supportive and productive activities. Friendly insects and pollinators can also be protected—even when healthy food production is increased—through mixed cropping and proper rotations. None of this can be achieved with over-mechanised monocultures overfed with hazardous agrochemicals. It’s a job cut out for small farmers and family farms.

Also read: Why India needs to invest in natural farming

American writer and farmer Wendell Berry says in The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, “The farmer differs from the industrialist in that the farmer is necessarily a nurturer, a preserver of the health of creatures. The economy of the industry is typically extractive. It takes, makes, uses and discards, it progresses, from exhaustion to pollution. Agriculture, on the other hand, rightly belongs to a replenishing economy, which takes, makes, uses and returns—it involves the return to the source, not just of fertility or of so-called wastes but also of care and affection.”

This “care and affection” Berry mentions can only be provided by small farmers, and not big machines and corporations. Unfortunately, policies have not been encouraging towards these communities. Instead, as Berry says in the context of the US, “It is a work of monstrous ignorance and irresponsibility on the part of the experts and politicians, who have prescribed, encouraged and applauded the disintegration of farming communities all over the country.”

Further, Berry writes, “What we have called agricultural progress has, in fact, involved the forcible displacement of millions of people.”

He goes on to make critical concluding observations: “Food is a cultural product, it cannot be produced by technology alone…a healthy farm culture can be based only upon familiarity and can grow only among a people soundly established upon the land; it nourishes and safeguards a human intelligence of the earth that no amount of technology can satisfactorily replace.”

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This is a statement of global relevance—but is especially pertinent to India— as it succinctly explains why it is important to protect and strengthen communities of small farmers and family farms as the foundations of the food and farming system.

In times of more adverse weather and climate change, the government must play a much bigger supportive role for them. Further, experience in many parts of the country reveals that a combination of greater self-reliance, low expenditure on expensive external inputs and adoption of sustainable natural farming practices can contribute a lot to keeping these farmers out of crisis and debt traps.

Also read: RTI Act: A powerful tool in fighting hunger

Nestled in the lush green Gonasika hills of Odisha’s Kendujhar district, at an elevation of around 3,000 feet, lives the Juang community—one of the state’s 13 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs). For generations, the Juangs relied on the nearby forest—for food, medicine, firewood, and shelter. Their forebears knew that there would always be food in the forest, from tubers, to mushrooms, and insects.

The community meticulously foraged these wild foods, ensuring that they don’t over-harvest. While a portion of the wild foods was used for household consumption, the surplus was sold in the local weekly market, to supplement household incomes. Tragically, colonisation brought this relationship with the forest to a halt. “During the engrej sashan (British rule), our forest was declared as a reserve. This restricted our access to the very source of our sustenance,” laments Rukmini Juang, 68, from the Budhighar village in Banspal block.

Last year, the Juang tribe was accorded Habitat Rights under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006; this grants them the right to their own land and its resources. "However, the management plan for the habitat is yet to be developed by the Juang community, which needs to be passed in the Gram Sabha," says Birabar Naik, the founder of Banabasi Chetna Mandal that works for the land rights of tribal communities in Kendujhar. Determined to protect their habitat from the forest department–which may use it for commercial plantation–the Mandal is holding community meetings to arrive at a plan to govern their own land. 

Freedom from the coloniser did not come with much relief for the community. Post independence, mining-induced displacement in Odisha further impacted the Juangs. The Kendujhar district—rich in minerals like iron ore, manganese, bauxite, and gold—has seen 64 mining projects since the 1980s, diverting over 10,000 hectares of forest land, the highest in Odisha. “Our water bodies are polluted, and the soil has hardened. Crop yields have dropped,” says Hemant Juang, 43, from the Kalanda village. “The youth is losing interest in farming, turning instead to labour in mines or migrating to other states for backbreaking work,’’ he adds. 

Traditionally, the Juangs cultivated their native crops in mixed farming systems. But after 2010, resettlement as well as the introduction of hybrid seeds have led to the loss of heirloom varieties that are resilient, low-input, and nutritionally rich, eventually replacing them. Hybrid varieties of maize, paddy, potatoes and onions were planted. Monocropping of such varieties and the application of chemical inputs have reduced crop yield and jeopardised the community's traditional food diversity and culinary heritage. “The government once promoted Telangana Basmati here,” recalls Jema Juang, the sarpanch of Gonasika panchayat. This was the new rice variety, Telangana Sona, developed by Professor Jayashankar of the Telangana State Agricultural University (PJTSAU) in 2017. At around the same time, it was introduced to the Juang farmers—promoted as a healthy, extremely beneficial crop. It has the lowest glycemic index of all known varieties of paddy, a high protein, energy and carbohydrate content, and promising yields. 

“It was unsuitable for our land and needed costly chemical inputs. The resultant yield was less, too,” says Jema. 

Also read: One Odisha woman’s mission to preserve taste, tradition through seeds

Reviving native seeds

Since 2016, Talapada village in Banspal block has been charting a different path. Here, 30 Juang women have emerged as guardians of agrobiodiversity. They collect, preserve, and exchange over 70 varieties of native seeds—millets, cereals, pulses, tubers, and vegetables—reviving traditional mixed farming practices. “Our native seeds are a gift from our ancestors,” says Kusumi Juang, 47. “Unlike hybrids, they can be saved and replanted season after season.” Kusumi started farming around 2016, and she played an instrumental role in encouraging other women of her village to preserve native seeds. 

The women ensure genetic purity through seasonal propagation–the practice of growing a crop in its ideal seasons and climatic condition–which allows them to harvest the best, most “pure” crops for seeds. It also maintains uniformity of traditional varieties by cutting out the rogue “off-types.” They also exchange seeds to diversify what they grow. This practice, known as seed stewardship, preserves plant traits and improves resilience to environmental changes, explains Susanta Sekhar Choudhury, Programme Manager-Seed Systems at Watershed Support Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN), Bhubaneswar.

“We harvest seeds from mature and healthy plants for the next cropping season, making sure not to include those which have been affected by wild animals,” says Kusumi as she showcases the varieties of finger millet, paddy and green gram that she harvested last year. “We are a seed-sufficient community. We don’t need to buy hybrid seeds from the market. Saving and exchanging native seeds is part of our culture. And over the years, this culture has fostered our community unity and bond,” she added.

Apart from the give and take of seed, the Juang women also share knowledge about different traditional methods. Maize, ridge gourd, and panicles of sorghum are often hung above the cooking area in the kitchen. The kitchen’s smoke and optimal temperature help protect the seed from pests and fungi. Ash is mixed with seed, and kept in earthen pots and bamboo baskets covered with straw and plastered with cow dung, to make the containers airtight. 

Dry leaves of different plants and trees are also used to preserve seeds. For instance, the leaves of begonia (Vitex negundo) and neem (Azadirachta indica) are mixed with pulses. This practice saves the pulses from beetle attacks. Similarly, turmeric and bael (Aegle marmelos) leaves are also used for preserving native seeds. 

Also read: Sasbani’s 'fruits' of labour: Reviving hope in rural Uttarakhand

The power of women’s labour

Juang women are central to the community’s agriculture, taking vital decisions about the crops to be grown, mixing seeds of different crops before sowing, and carrying manure to the field. They also take care of weeding, harvesting, threshing and storing. 

“We don’t create separate plots for different crops. We mix a variety of crops in different proportions according to our family needs and sow them in one plot,” says Krushna Juanga, an octogenarian—the oldest woman in Talapada. Elders like Krushna attest to women’s empowered involvement in the region’s agriculture, a reality that has been shaped over the last four to five generations. The Juangs follow tailo chasho, a traditional rainfed mixed and rotational cropping system wherein several types of crops are grown simultaneously in a specific area, mostly on the mountain slopes. They grow a range of millets, too, such as sorghum, ragi, barnyard, little and foxtail–all native varieties.

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Pulses like black gram, green gram, horse gram, red gram and cowpea are grown in the same patch of land. Native varieties of black gram such as kala biri, chikinie biri and badhie biri are grown. They also cultivate other crops like maize, and several oilseeds such as sesame (kala rashi, dhala rashi, native varieties), mustard (rie, lutunie, native varieties) and niger.

Juang women are central to the community’s agriculture, taking vital decisions about the crops to be grown, mixing seeds of different crops before sowing, and carrying manure to the field. They also take care of weeding, harvesting, threshing and storing. 

Before broadcasting (the scattering and spreading of seeds at random) and sowing, the women ensure that their preserved seeds dry in the sun, so that they have a better rate of germination. The male members of the community plough the even and flat portion of the plot with oxen before the onset of monsoon in May-June. The women use a hoe to dig up the soil around the rocky and steep spots where the plough cannot be used. They sow seed in the dug out holes. Generally, the central portion of the plot is used for local varieties of upland paddy like alitundi, bijapatia and kalaputia. In the periphery of the paddy plot, taller crops like ragi and sorghum are grown. They act as border crops, an effective barrier for the wild animals. In between the ragi and sorghum, other crops are also intercropped like pulses, maize and tubers.

Also read: Babulal Dahiya makes every grain of rice count

Bountiful harvests

Only farmyard manure is used, in an effort to increase soil fertility. Traditionally, each Juang household rears indigenous breeds of cattle, oxen, goats and poultry. Dry dung from the livestock is applied in the field before sowing. Organic waste like crop residues decomposes and boosts fertility further. “The forest plays an important role in our traditional agriculture,” says Krushna, “Nutrient washout from the hilltop flow brings dead soil back to life, enabling better crop growth.” 

During monsoon, says WASSAN programme manager Choudhury, “The rich humus from the nearby forest flows into the field, which improves water retention, enriches soil fertility, and promotes the growth of beneficial microorganisms. This mixed pattern of cropping prevents overexploitation of the water table and soil nutrients, because different crops have different nutrient requirements. Besides, it also prevents soil erosion.”

The harvesting of different crops takes place across different months, providing a continuous supply of diversified ingredients. The first phase starts in September, at the end of which maize and paddy are harvested. After this, mustard is sown in the plot. The second harvest phase begins in November, when pulses and millets are the crops in focus. Farmers harvest sesame in December, and Mustard—the last crop—is taken care of in January.

Sesame and mustard are mainly cultivated as cash crops, while millets, rice, pulses, vegetables and tubers are grown for sustenance. The surplus of these harvests are sold by the Juang women in the local weekly markets, known as haats.

Heirloom seeds have empowered the Juang community to become seed sovereign and maintain a sustainable food supply throughout the year.

Talapada resident Parvati Juang, 41–who has been farming for 20 years now–beams about the rich dividends of tailo chasho. Last year, she harvested around 5 quintals of ragi, 8 quintals of paddy, 500 kg of sorghum, 1 quintal of maize, 845 kg of mustard, 650 kg of chickpea and over 700 kg of sesame from her two-acre farm. Besides, she also harvested 50 bags of taro (a tuber variety) and over 500 kg of various vegetables. “After selling the surplus harvest, last year, I earned around Rs 92,000,” says Parvati, who is a mother to two sons and a daughter. With the income earned from agriculture, she is able to support her children’s education.

“We grow our own food, which is nutritious and chemical-free,” says Ratnabati Juanga, 37, another Talapada resident. “Our native crops have evolved over many generations. They are suitable for our landscape, and can withstand extreme temperatures and prolong dry spells. In the neighbouring villages, we have seen farmers have switched to hybrid varieties to get high yield. But these alien varieties often fail to cope with even minor climate change.” Alien varieties also require expensive and harmful chemicals, a reason that motivated many Juang women to conserve native varieties in Talapada.

Heirloom seeds have empowered the Juang community to become seed sovereign and maintain a sustainable food supply throughout the year. “Ironically, open-pollinated and heirloom seed varieties are rapidly disappearing from the agricultural landscape,” says Arabinda Kumar Padhee, Principal Secretary, Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment, Government of Odisha. “Alongside this, the traditional knowledge and practices of seed saving are also fading. The growing dependence on a limited number of crops—primarily hybrids—has significantly reduced biodiversity in our food systems, making many crops increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis,” he highlighted.

The Juang women of Talapada are proving that traditional knowledge and biodiversity are not relics of the past, but essential tools for a sustainable future.

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Photos by Abhijit Mohanty

Prakash Bhoir sits taut in his chair, facing his quaint cottage. He is surrounded by a rich diversity of flora indigenous to Kelti Pada, his tribal hamlet in the heart of Mumbai’s Aarey Forest. The mud walls of the cottage are embellished with intricate, traditional Warli motifs painted by Bhoir’s son, Akash, a civil engineer who splits his time equally between his career and community work.

Bhoir recalls a recent leopard sighting near their home, tapping on a video of CCTV footage on his phone with one hand, and dipping a bhakri in tea with the other. “The leopard was on the prowl for a cat,” he says with a chuckle. “It left shortly after it failed at the task. These animals don’t bother us unless we make a move. It [the forest] is their home, and we, as humans, are at fault for encroaching upon their territory.” He is a fierce Adivasi activist in Mumbai’s North-Western suburb of Goregaon—one of the few green patches left in the city. A jubilant member of the Adivasi Haq Samvardhan Samiti–a group working to protect the rights of tribals–Bhoir is known for keeping his heritage alive through performing and visual folk arts, which he promotes at cultural events all over the city.

He points out that such encounters with leopards have become more frequent–so much so that his family is quite welcoming of them now. Tribal faiths are centred around elements of nature, including wild animals; for Bhoir and his community, the ecosystem they nurture is above all. “I see God in all of nature, because I feel the need to protect it. When I see trees as Hirva Dev (Green God), I am entrusted with the responsibility of protecting them. I see God in the soil, because when I give her one seed, she gives me a thousand seeds in return. When we see God in these elements of nature, we fear polluting them. The soil is our Dhartari Mata; she gives us food.”

And thus, as deforestation projects take root in the Aarey Milk Colony, its original residents seethe at the slow encroachment of humans on nature. Urban trespassing has especially affected the forest’s ecology. At multiple spots in Aarey–as many as 56–you can find mounds of garbage disposed of by suburban Mumbai residents, and oftentimes this garbage is burnt. This provides fuel for unnatural forest fires, which have become a common occurrence in the region now. Development projects at the cost of Aarey’s green cover have also had a devastating impact on the forest’s residents.

I see God in the soil, because when I give her one seed, she gives me a thousand seeds in return.

Home to a number of tribes such as the Warlis, Katkaris and Malhar Kolis, this stretch of green has traditionally been the primary source—and site—of livelihood for them. Many have been practising agriculture here for as long as they can remember. They cultivate and forage for their own sustenance, and sell the excess in the city’s markets; their crops include both traditional and mainstream varieties. Indigenous vegetables or raan-bhajya, such as Kantola [spiny gourd], Shevli [dragon stalk yam], Vaghati [spiny caper], and Koli Bhaji [white musli] are often grown during the rainy season in all 27 tribal hamlets.

Also read: A man dreamt of a forest. It became a model for the world

The gift that keeps giving

The forest contains within itself everything that its residents need to survive: something that is best illustrated by the local cuisine, moulded and enriched by the forest’s gifts. For instance, many preparations use tamarind–either as a hero ingredient in dishes like the zingy chincha aamti [tamarind gravy], or to uplift other dishes like curries–because this tree grows in abundance. Plants are utilised in their entirety: the leaves of the local takla [Cassia tora]–a nitrogen fixing plant–are fried with garlic and chilli, while its aromatic seeds are used by some communities as a substitute for coffee. Foraging from the land, trees and rivers offers chutneys made with wild sesame and the delicious, fishy bombil [Bombay Duck]; tubers like loth and kand; soft-shell crabs and fish that is dried and added to meals; and salads made from homegrown onion, tomato, and lemons.

The nearby suburbs of Goregaon, Jogeshwari, and Andheri are an ideal place to sell what they cultivate, because there is no shortage of customers–there is immense demand for their harvest all year long. Some families earn up to Rs. 600 a day selling seasonal vegetables, and even up to Rs. 3,000 a day when their mangoes are on offer. “Fruits like pineapple and jackfruit sell extremely well. However, city-dwellers have also developed an interest in our indigenous crops, as they are known to provide immunity and resistance against diseases,” Bhoir adds. 

There are times when urban customers travel all the way to tribal farmlands simply to buy produce and observe how it is grown. It is an intriguing process, and the farmers make the most of their limited resources. For instance, the water supply for the irrigation of crops in Kelti Pada often comes from the numerous tabelas [buffalo sheds] in the vicinity, which were constructed as a part of the Aarey Milk Colony project in 1949. The water that is used to bathe buffaloes contains manure, which acts as an excellent natural fertiliser for the crops.

Though the tribal communities have harnessed their immense traditional wisdom for years to grow and prepare the unique offerings of the forest, Bhoir has noticed a change. The worsening nature of the weather combined with the changing diet of his community has influenced their own health. Visits to the doctor, for instance, have become nearly habitual, when they were once just occasional. This is why he stresses on the consumption of indigenous vegetables, fondly referring to them as the ‘bank balance’ of one’s health. “These vegetables have to be eaten at least once a year for good health. Some of them are meant to be consumed in a specific way. For example, the Kadu Kand is supposed to be sweetened before consumption. You have to slice and salt it overnight, boil it in the morning, and only then is it fit for consumption. Shevli cannot be eaten by itself–it has to be eaten with a fruit called Kakad. You have to mix them, otherwise the shevli creates an itchy sensation in one’s throat.” 

The forest contains within itself everything that its residents need to survive: something that is best illustrated by the local cuisine, moulded and enriched by the forest’s gifts.

Some other changes have been gradual. Members of the community once made sweets with the delightful tavshi–a huge three feet-long cucumber weighing nearly two kilos that they harvested in the forest. But now, they buy the kakdi from their local market. Then, there is the matter of rainfall. Organic ecosystems like the one developed in Aarey over thousands of years are most often self-sufficient and cyclical. Farmers in Kelti Pada have always depended on rainfall, which has typically been sufficient to provide ample water to their crops year after year. As climate change tightens its grasp, farmers struggle with unseasonal rainfall. There has also been a growing reliance on irrigation facilities.

Mumbai’s monsoon typically lasts four months, beginning from the first week of June. Aarey’s farmers sow their seeds about 15 days before this annual commencement. The seeds germinate during this fortnight, beginning to grow as soon as the showers begin. But now, unpredictable rainfall patterns have disrupted this pre-established agricultural rhythm. “The balance is lost. This is why crops cannot yield the same quality and quantity of vegetables,” Bhoir says.

His own seed preservation techniques have been affected in the process. Reusing seeds from the previous year used to be a community tradition. Now they are now forced to buy seeds from commercial markets that are genetically modified to withstand extreme weather conditions. “The weather has changed. The vegetables are different now. Even the trust within the agrarian community is lost. Now, everyone prefers to opt for corporate jobs that pay a guaranteed salary.” 

Also read: One Odisha woman’s mission to preserve taste, tradition through seeds

‘This land is our land’

Agriculture no longer provides the financial assurance that it did until two generations ago. Neither is it a fallback option if nothing else works out for Aarey’s residents. Unsurprisingly, many Adivasi youth are straying away from this traditional occupation, in search of more trusted and less risky sources of income.

Artist Manisha Dhinde, a young and crucial member of the Aarey Conservation Group, is deeply invested in her heritage. She educates her audience about Adivasi art, culture and food. Dhinde is eager to hold forth on the nitty-gritties of her people’s agricultural practices, which reveal the functional nature of urban agriculture. “The Adivasis who reside near the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) in Borivali, Aarey Forest, and near Bhandup, cultivate rice because of their proximity to water bodies. The ones residing in the mountainous parts tend to grow seasonal crops such as Galka (sponge gourd), cucumber, and bottle gourd,” Dhinde points out. “Here in Maroshi Pada, where I stay, we grow vegetables throughout the year, and rice once a year. We also grow dals [lentils] such as Urad [black gram] and Tur [pigeon pea].”

But in Mumbai, urbanisation is rapid and constant. Projects like the Aarey Metro Car Shed, Film City, and, more recently, the Goregaon-Mulund Link Road, are considered a hindrance to the livelihoods of Aarey’s indigenous groups. Dhinde insists that it is a problem that has persisted right from the conception of the Aarey Milk Colony, and has only grown since then. “We’ve always had to struggle, right from the time when the Aarey Dairy was first built. However, the situation today is starkly different: all of these [development] projects are meant to contribute to Mumbai’s ‘progress’. Yet they do not benefit us, and we are not consulted in the process [of their conceptualisation]. People say India is an agrarian nation, but if you wipe out farms to make way for ‘development’, where does agriculture go?”

Reusing seeds from the previous year used to be a community tradition. Now they are now forced to buy seeds from commercial markets that are genetically modified to withstand extreme weather conditions.

Her words ring true. Aarey’s alarming depletion has been a warning sign for Mumbai’s ecosystem, right from the 1990s when the Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road was opened to traffic. The road is only a seven-minute walk from Bhoir’s hamlet. Similarly, in 2019, the Maharashtra Government reportedly got rid of over 2,000 trees within the Aarey Forest in order to build a car shed for the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation. The Mumbai Metro Line 3 project is reported to reduce a sizable portion of the forest as well. Moreover, a few months ago, the Goregaon-Mulund Link Road, a 6.5 km underground twin tunnel project connecting the two suburbs, was slated to cut down approximately 1,567 trees, inciting criticism from citizens. 

The ambiguity of Aarey’s geographical location adds to the chaos. Aarey started off as one of the first civilised zones in the city, with the commencement of Dara Khurody’s Bombay Milk Scheme in the 1950s, which revolutionised India’s dairy industry. The project remains immortalised in the colony’s name to this day. The forest land, at this time, was declared as a No Development Zone (NDZ); the part which falls under the SGNP area has since come to be classified as an Eco-Sensitive Zone (ESZ). Today, however, the demarcations of the “forest land” remain largely equivocal. The spread begins at one end in Jogeshwari, goes over to the eastern part of Goregaon, and eventually merges with the SGNP, sprawling across the northern suburbs of the city. 

The lack of formal education among the residents of the tribal hamlets further complicates the hurdles posed by development projects and changing climate. Vanita Thakre, a significant cultural figure in the forest, says, “We are not well-educated. Where do we go? How do we live? How do we look after our children? These are the questions we’re asking of authorities.”

Also read: Can India’s traditional knowledge future-proof its food system?

Most farmers have started looking beyond agriculture to make a quick buck. Several have taken up oddball jobs such as housekeeping, gardening and security. Several others have left their homes in search of better employment avenues. Thakre herself earns a little by showing tourists around the forest. “I give tourists information and teach them about organic farming. I offer knowledge about making fertiliser and managing waste, too.”

Adivasis have started considering their own farmlands as a backup option–but with looming development plans that threaten to swallow up more of their forest, even the idea of a Plan B seems distant. “Though some work for corporate entities outside the forest, a majority of us remain heavily dependent on agriculture and the forest. We have enough to feed ourselves—and that is why this land is so inextricably tied to our existence,” she concludes.

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(Edited by Neerja Deodhar and Anushka Mukherjee)

Just a few lanes from the high-rises of Saat Rasta—an upscale neighbourhood in Mahalaxmi/South Mumbai, is a space locally referred to as the 'Tabela'. It’s a strange name, since a ‘tabela’ refers to a dairy farm, and there hasn’t been a single buffalo in sight in the vicinity for years. Turns out, the area used to be a tabela before it was converted into a residential space, which is why locals still remember it by its past name. Today, the area is home to baithi chawls—single storeyed structures which were introduced by the Maharashtra Housing And State Development Authority (MHADA) in the 1970s, when it was converted into a Transit Camp. The structure which houses residents has persisted. The remains of the tabela, however, survive only in speech, the last refuge of forgotten geographies.

Sixty nine-year-old Salim Rizvi, who has lived in Saat Rasta for a long time, remembers a Mumbai that was once Bombay and recounts its history. The lean, soft-spoken member of the Nagori community speaks of his forefathers who first migrated to the city in 1938—and who were one of the first of many to own a tabela in the area, which stretched across nearly five acres. Standing behind the counter of his dairy business, the Bandra Milk Centre, Rizvi’s eyes light up when he speaks of the Nagori community—a group of dairy farmers who migrated from Rajasthan’s Nagaur district to Mumbai.

The Nagori community’s primary, ancestral occupation has always revolved around milk. Back in Rajasthan, labour was hard to find and business remained largely local, contained to one’s own and neighbouring villages. Mumbai offered a bigger and better market. The Nagoris identified the city’s growing appetite and demand for dairy, and families arrived in waves—some before Partition, and some after. The community laid the foundations for a milk network, which today comprises nearly 4000 centres across the city. They are predominantly Sunni Muslims. Even though they have established businesses across metropolitan Mumbai, they have maintained strong ties with their ancestral village Basni and visit it often.

Everyday, Rizvi returns to his milk centre after his Zohar prayers at exactly 3 p.m. and pauses for just a moment before commencing his work again. His daily afternoon rituals? Ladling milk into packets and handing out ice cream to children waiting outside his shop. His attire is similar to that of most Nagori men—he is dressed in a white kurta and pajamas, along with a skull cap. He also keeps a long beard. 

Most of Rizvi’s customers are from upscale areas like Bandra. Once a Physics and Maths professor, he left academia behind to devote himself fully to the milk business. Like every other Nagori milk centre, Rizvi’s shop also serves a few dairy products that are made in-house and are highly in demand. However, he doesn’t sell shrikhand—a product he claims to have mastered, but which ostensibly doesn’t have a market in Bandra. “Milk is one of the only foods whose value increases as it spoils. If the milk goes bad, we can make paneer out of it, which sells for Rs. 400 per kg. If it spoils further, we can turn it into ghee and sell it at Rs. 800 per kg,” he says.

The Nagoris brought with them not just buffaloes but an entire social architecture: a co-operative network that still supplies raw, fresh, and unpasteurised milk to thousands of homes and chai stalls at nukkads across Mumbai. The Nagori way of doing business has inherited and retained its analog quality through generations of dairy farmers. Their product is delivered with the same fidelity as it has for nearly a century: milk arrives from farms in clinking aluminum cans, and is ferried to dairies tucked away in old neighbourhoods, where winding queues of customers are already waiting. Several Nagoris paused operations during the Indian Emergency of 1975, but reopened once the turmoil tided over. Milk is poured by the litre, curd is ladled into steel bowls, and lassi is freshly churned everyday. No apps, subscriptions or delivery people interfere with how the system has run for over a century. 

The Nagoris identified the city’s growing appetite and demand for dairy, and families arrived in waves—some before Partition, and some after.

While many Nagoris left in search of education or other careers, a significant number of them found their way back to the family business due to familiarity with the operations and community support. Mohammed Sardar, 57, speaks about how he once wanted to become a doctor. He worked towards this goal determinedly, but eventually chose the milk business instead. “I couldn’t find a reason not to,” he says while recalling how difficult it was to acquire a seat in a medical college. 

Today, his son helps run the business – a tabela which was set up in 1958 by Sardar’s grandfather in Jogeshwari. So do his nephews. One of them did become a doctor but eventually “ended up in the kaarobaar [business],” Sardar says.

In 1977, the Nagoris realised the need to bring people from their community together. Rizvi and fellow Nagoris formed the Bombay Nagori Association. The association voluntarily helps people from the community join the business. Every three years, an Association head is elected. Rizvi, who continues to be on the Board of Directors recalls that at a point, folks from the famed Aarey Milk Colony in Mumbai also came seeking collaboration, but the community—so close-knit in nature—was not comfortable sharing their space.

Post the COVID-19 pandemic, many members from the Nagori community have migrated to other metropolitan cities, including New Delhi, Ahmedabad, Surat, and Nashik to set up tea stalls. However, their core milk trade remains in Mumbai, unchanged.

Also read: Is the paneer on your plate real?

A lineage of milk

Nagori milk has its own dedicated fanbase. But anyone who has ever loitered around the streets of Mumbai in search of a piping, hot cup of tea is sure to have encountered a Nagori tea stall. Customers throng the tea centres from morning until night. The sweet, creamy tea has a distinct flavour profile and has built a reputation for itself in the city’s dairy economy. 

But the ‘chayaas’—my grandmother’s playful blend of ‘chai’ [tea] and ‘pyaas’ [thirst]—has somehow turned into an addiction, exclusive to this side of the border. It was only after the British introduced tea to India that some community members began selling tea alongside milk. Interestingly, those who migrated to Pakistan following the 1947 Partition continue focusing solely on the milk trade, never incorporating the caffeine-fix into their business model, says Rizvi, who has relatives across the border.

Ahmed Raza, who is also from Nagaur, runs a tea stall in Agripada. Raza has been sourcing milk from Morland Dairy (a Nagori enterprise) since 1983, a supplier which has monopolised the Saat Rasta/Jacob Circle neighbourhoods of Mumbai since 1952. He explains that only those who own tabelas (dairy farms) operate milk centres; the rest typically run tea stalls like him. 

Raza religiously waits at Morland Dairy every day, waiting for the milk van to arrive. The assistants at the shop ready themselves in anticipation, rinsing the cans so that they can be filled with fresh milk. Customers arrive at 8 p.m like clockwork. Every few minutes, someone stops by—people riding a scooter with a child in tow, or burqa-clad women—asking familiar questions: “Doodh aaya? [Has the milk arrived yet?]” “Gaadi kitni door hai? [How far away is the milk van?]” The answer is always the same: “It’s on its way, just wait a little longer.”

“The moment the vehicle arrives, customers stream in from all corners as if they were lurking around the neighbourhood, waiting for just this moment, " Raza says as he chuckles. The dairy has a loyal clientele, some of whom have been buying this milk from the past 30 years. 

Despite high demand, the businessmen refuse to offer doorstep delivery and have remained analog—even when customers offer to pay ₹5–10 extra per litre, or pay in advance. Why? Mainly due to the fear of middlemen adulterating the milk, and past experiences of customers relocating without settling a month’s worth of dues.

Nilofar Shaikh is one such customer who waits outside Morland Dairy at 8 every evening. “The milk quality is so good that I don’t mind stepping out of the house to purchase it, rather than just ordering online. We use other kinds of milk when making desserts like sheer khurma or custard because it is thinner. But Nagori milk is what we prefer for everyday use,” she said. “The price rises by Rs. 2 every year but we don’t mind paying a little extra since the milk is fresh.”

The dairy has a loyal clientele, some of whom have been buying this milk from the past 30 years. Despite high demand, the businessmen refuse to offer doorstep delivery and have remained analog—even when customers offer to pay ₹5–10 extra per litre, or pay in advance.

The price hike is a reflection of CNG and fodder prices. In 2006, the Maharashtra government proposed moving Mumbai’s existing tabelas to Palghar, a suburb on the outskirts of the city, in an effort to make urban areas cattle-free. While the Bombay Nagori Association did not agree to this, a compromise was struck and the tabelas were moved farther from the city to its northern peripheries—first to Jogeshwari, and later to Vasai. This relocation inconvenienced vendors and is reflected in rising milk prices. This also causes a delayed delivery given the traffic jams have gotten worse in the city. 

Morland Dairy is the only milk parlour eponymously named after its location. Most Nagori stalls are named after the Sufi saint Garib Nawaz or a family member. Mubin Nagori is the fourth generation stakeholder of the dairy. Unlike other milk which can be stored outside for a certain period of time, Nagori milk needs immediate attention. “Since this is raw milk, it goes bad if it stays out for over an hour without being boiled,” he says. This explains why crowds eagerly wait each evening for the milk vans to arrive.

His father, Haji Qasam Kashmiri, is the current head of the Nagori Association. Much like the rest of the community, Haji Sahab frequently visits Basni. Mubin, who is in his late twenties, says, “Even if I earn around 15,000 rupees per month, it is ample money for me to live a peaceful life when I travel back to my village.”

Also read: Sasbani’s 'fruits' of labour: Reviving hope in rural Uttarakhand

The udder side

“Over a period of time the business network has moved towards Mira Road and Bhayander. These suburbs have the most number of milk centres today,” says Mubin. Morland Dairy is supplied by a dairy farm in Dahisar, which is about 30 km away. The smell of hay and cow dung fill the air during the walk towards Dahisar naka, hinting at the multiple tabelas in the area.

At the farm, women start walking in with their wide ghamelas (large iron containers) at 5 p.m. sharp as the cleaning begins. Meanwhile, the men carry hay stacks and ready the buffaloes for milking. The place has heaps of sacks full of cow feed. Sacks of cow feed are heaped over each other and milk cans clink gently.

Mubin’s older brother, Waqar Nagori is in charge of the dairy farm. He helps me understand the animals behind the business. “Most of the buffaloes used for milk production are sourced from Punjab and Haryana,” he says, “They belong to the Murrah breed whose fat content is high”. Waqar doesn’t regard bigger brands and labels as a competition since “the fresh milk supply (such as that which the Nagori community specialises in) makes up only for 10% of the whole milk market in Mumbai.”

The jet black Murrah is known for being the highest milk yielding buffalo of the 20 indigenous ones found in India. The animal has a massive body, a long head and neck, a short and tightly coiled horn, a well developed udder and broad hips. Each buffalo in the Nagori farms is given a carefully balanced diet totaling around 17 kilograms of feed per day to maintain its health as well as the consistency and quantity of the milk yield.

“The farms that move towards technologising their work will survive, the ones like ours will find it very difficult. This is also because finding labour is becoming troublesome,” Waqar says. His may be one of the last generations who will manually run the Nagori milk business. A trade-off between tradition and technology seems near-inevitable if the legacy enterprise is to survive.

The fodder comprises 2 kilograms of kapas khali [cottonseed cake], 1 kilogram each of toor chunni, makai chunni, and chana chunni—all husks of different pulses and grains. The buffaloes are also fed 2 kilograms of wheat bhusa [straw], 2 kilograms of paw beard [a legume-based fodder], 1 kilogram of broken biscuits (used as high-calorie feed), 3 kilograms of jawar kutti [chopped sorghum], and 4 kilograms of pinda grass, a nutritious green fodder. To boost energy and maintain health, an additional mix is given daily: 100 grams of gud [jaggery], 100 grams of oil, and 50 grams of a mineral supplement. As the heat in recent years has increased, jaggery has become an important part of the animals’ diet, especially during the summer months.

As evening arrives, the milking begins. The men collect the milk in buckets and then pour it into 25-litre and 40-litre cans. These are then loaded onto trucks and sent to milk collection centres. Meanwhile, the women help clean up by collecting cow dung in metal containers. Throughout the day, men spread hay and check on the animals. Above the main collection area, a low attic serves as a makeshift dormitory for many of the workers. It’s a tight space marked by small signs of domesticity like laundry fluttering in the windows and a towel slung over a railing.  

Under pressure

The Nagoris have a flourishing milk trade in Mumbai. Even in an economy marked by online deliveries and branded, mass-produced items, Nagori milk and milk products are an inextricable part of the city’s fabric, and the lives of patrons who have been visiting dairies since generations. Younger generations also seem inclined towards becoming integrated into the family trade because of the strong demand for their products. But a threat looms over this milk mini-industry. 

Waqar gestures toward the neighboring farms that still stand, but is uncertain about their collective future as dairy farmers.“In 2006-2007 we moved our Jogeshwari farm to Vasai. As cities continue to urbanise and populate these areas, it gets harder for us to run the business. There’s hardly any tabela left,” he says. His concern isn’t unfounded. High-rises are shooting into the sky just a stone’s throw away—silent signals of a city closing in, threatening to edge the farms out once more. Transportation has also become a major challenge in Mumbai’s socio-political landscape. Moving cattle from one place to another often involves long delays, inspections and even fines, even though the community works only with buffaloes and not cows. 

“The farms that move towards technologising their work will survive, the ones like ours will find it very difficult. This is also because finding labour is becoming troublesome,” Waqar says. His may be one of the last generations who will manually run the Nagori milk business. A trade-off between tradition and technology seems near-inevitable if the legacy enterprise is to survive.

Yet, there’s hope on the horizon. The Bombay Nagori Association is helping younger generations within the community to learn the ins and outs of a century-old trade by assisting with logistics, such as milk supply and setting up a milk centre or tea stall of their own. Some, such as Rizvi’s children, have stepped in to carry the legacy forward with the same dedication. Now a mentor, Rizvi guides not only his own children but also the younger members of the Bombay Nagori Association, ensuring the tradition lives on.

Quoting Allama Iqbal, a celebrated Urdu poet, Rizvi offers a parting thought:
“Zara nam ho to yeh mitti badi zarkhaiz hai, saqi.”
"Even a parched land can thrive, with the right care and spirit."

Nagori tea and milk—unassuming, essential—quietly sustains the city’s restless population, their makers largely invisible, working far from the spotlight. As the city continues to be reshaped by political upheaval and relentless technological change, this community clings to a tradition inherited from a bygone Mumbai, when trams rattled through the streets and life unfolded more deliberately. In the sweet creaminess of a Nagori chai, one tastes both comfort and a lost slowness. Every steaming cup of Nagori chai served on Mumbai’s street corners embodies both the spirit of survival and a living archive of migration and culture.

Also read: Eating healthy: Is take-out cheaper than cooking at home?

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The Plate and the Planet is a monthly column by Dr. Madhura Rao, a food systems researcher and science communicator, exploring the connection between the food on our plates and the future of our planet.

Across India, it is not uncommon to find people relying on nature and its signs to determine the course of their own actions, from farmers predicting monsoon showers by observing the movement of ants, to herders navigating pasture routes based on the flowering patterns of local trees. Practices, skills, and insights that emerge from a community’s long-standing relationship with its environment, often passed down through generations, are referred to as traditional knowledge. The term is often used interchangeably with ‘Indigenous knowledge’, particularly in contexts where settler communities form the majority of the population, such as in the US or parts of Latin America. In these settings, Indigenous communities are typically recognised as the primary custodians of place-based knowledge systems.

However, in the Indian context, the distinction is less clear-cut. Much of what is termed traditional knowledge is held not only by constitutionally recognised Indigenous communities (Adivasis), but also by a wide range of rural and agrarian communities who have co-evolved with their local environments over centuries. Therefore, for the purpose of this column, I use the term ‘traditional knowledge’ as an inclusive umbrella that encompasses the diverse, place-based knowledge systems developed and sustained by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities over generations.

Traditional knowledge vs. science 

In mainstream discourse, science typically refers to Western science—a system of knowledge production that privileges measurement, objectivity, and replicability. Built on principles of observation, experimentation, and statistical inference, it has yielded extraordinary insights into the natural world. It is, however, not the only way of knowing. Traditional knowledge, in contrast, emerges from long-term, lived engagement with particular landscapes. It is often transmitted orally, embedded in cultural rituals, and carried forward through everyday practices. 

The two knowledge systems differ not only in method, but also in worldview. Western science often draws boundaries between the empirical and the spiritual, and the observer and the observed. Traditional knowledge tends to be holistic, integrating material, moral, and metaphysical understandings of the world. This divergence, shaped by colonial histories that privileged European systems of knowledge while actively suppressing others, has led to the devaluation and erosion of traditional knowledge in our societies over time. 

Western science often draws boundaries between the empirical and the spiritual, and the observer and the observed. Traditional knowledge tends to be holistic, integrating material, moral, and metaphysical understandings of the world.

Indian agriculture’s divergence from tradition

Agriculture in India has a 10,000-year-old history. Traditional knowledge systems related to food, farming, and land management have evolved over millennia, closely attuned to local ecologies and cultural practices. But despite this rich inheritance of place-based knowledge, Indian agriculture has steadily shifted away from these practices over the past two centuries. This departure is rooted in a complex web of historical, economic, and political forces, beginning with colonialism and continuing through post-Independence development policies.

Under British rule, Indian agriculture was reshaped to serve imperial interests. A system of exploitative land taxation, combined with the expansion of railways–and thus, access to markets– incentivised farmers to abandon biodiverse, subsistence-oriented polycultures like bajra, legumes and pulses in favour of monocultures of cash crops such as cotton, jute, indigo, and opium. In the second half of the 19th century, these shifts not only displaced food crops like millets, but also eroded the role of local ecological knowledge in shaping farming practices.

A second major transformation came with the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 70s. Introduced as a solution to food shortages, it promoted high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice, supported by state subsidies for fertilisers, pesticides, and irrigation. These new varieties produced nearly 3-4 times more yield than the traditional wheat and rice crops–at nearly 4 tonnes per hectare, over a shorter cycle. So, while this model boosted short-term productivity, it created dependence on chemical inputs, reduced crop diversity, and displaced traditional practices such as intercropping, seed saving, and organic fertilisation. As subsidies declined, smallholder farmers, who form the backbone of Indian agriculture, became increasingly burdened by debt and lacked access to affordable credit or secure land tenure.

Indian agriculture today finds itself at a critical juncture. It is shaped by decades of structural dependence, yet there is growing awareness of the ecological and nutritional costs of marginalising knowledge systems that were once central to its sustainability. The shift toward input-intensive staple crops has depleted soils, drained groundwater, and introduced harmful pesticide residues into the food supply, while displacing diverse, traditionally grown foods—making nutritious diets increasingly unaffordable and out of reach for much of the population. The current food system may deliver in quantity but falters in quality, with long-term consequences for both public health and ecological resilience.

Also read: The circular bioeconomy movement can change how we see waste

Can traditional wisdom inform innovation?

In recent years, a number of initiatives have shown that traditional knowledge and science need not exist in opposition. When approached with mutual respect and institutional support, they can work in tandem to create food systems that are both ecologically sound and socially just.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Future Smart Foods (FSF) project, launched in 2018, offers an important example. The initiative aims to diversify food systems by identifying and promoting underutilised crops that are rich in nutrients, climate-resilient, economically viable, and locally available. West Bengal was one of the regions included in the effort. The process involved mapping agrobiodiversity by drawing on both scientific literature and consultations with local communities, helping to identify a range of crops that had long been part of local food cultures but were largely absent from mainstream agricultural policy. Some foods identified as part of this exercise include black rice (kalonunia), swamp taro, elephant foot yam (ol kachu), jackfruit, and moringa pods (drumsticks). Low input requirements and a strong tolerance to climate fluctuations make these foods especially suitable for smallholder cultivation. Based on this local knowledge, the FSF initiative compiled a set of priority crops now recognised as vital for enhancing dietary diversity, supporting livelihoods, and building resilience.

Indian agriculture today finds itself at a critical juncture. It is shaped by decades of structural dependence, yet there is growing awareness of the ecological and nutritional costs of marginalising knowledge systems that were once central to its sustainability.

A similar convergence of science and traditional knowledge can be seen in the popularisation of millets. Long ignored in national food policy, these climate-smart grains are once again being recognised for their nutritional value and cultural significance. Scientific research has helped validate their role in addressing malnutrition and supporting sustainable agriculture, leading to renewed policy attention–for instance, including Ragi, or finger millet, in public distribution systems and school meal programmes. The recent declaration of 2023 as the International Year of Millets by the United Nations marked a turning point in how these traditional crops are being reframed through both scientific and policy lenses.

The case of Sikkim, India’s first fully organic state, is another example that demonstrates how traditional agri-food knowledge can be supported and scaled through institutional mechanisms. Many farmers in the region had long relied on low-input, ecologically attuned practices such as  mulching with forest litter and crop residues, intercropping herbs like ginger and turmeric with staples such as buckwheat, beans, and tapioca to improve soil resilience, and using plant-based pest deterrents like neem and agave extracts. Farmers also practised nutrient cycling using forest biomass and employed terrace farming and local water diversion channels to prevent erosion and excessive run offs. 

The state’s organic policy, implemented over more than a decade, built upon this foundation by phasing out chemical fertilisers and pesticides, introducing organic certification, and offering training and subsidies. The policy helped legitimise traditional practices within formal systems, creating new economic and social value for local knowledge. Agricultural scientists worked alongside farmer networks, helping to document and refine existing techniques, while the state facilitated access to organic markets. 

However, the transition has not been without its challenges. Many farmers report declining yields for key crops like rice, maize, pulses, vegetables, and grains as pest management methods have proven insufficient and government support inconsistent. Organic inputs and training have not reached all cultivators, and critical data on pest attacks is lacking. And while the ‘organic’ label was expected to command higher prices, most farmers cannot access premium markets and remain dependent on middlemen. Certification costs are high, and commercial crops often receive policy preference over traditional food crops. Many also expressed dissatisfaction with the state's top-down approach, noting a lack of meaningful participation and democratic decision-making in the transition process.

Also read: The promises—and perils—of Indian aquaculture

Re-imagining what expertise looks like

A meaningful revival of traditional knowledge would require more than symbolic gestures or archival preservation. It would involve creating the conditions for these knowledge systems to be valued, practised, and allowed to evolve on their own terms; not as supplements to science, but as legitimate ways of understanding and engaging with the world. 

At present, the integration of traditional knowledge into formal systems remains uneven and often tokenistic. Communication barriers, conceptual mismatches, and deep-seated power imbalances continue to limit meaningful collaboration. Knowledge is frequently extracted from communities, decontextualised, and repackaged within scientific or policy frameworks, with little regard for the social, spiritual, or ethical dimensions from which it originates. 

Reviving traditional knowledge also means addressing the political and structural forces that have marginalised it. This includes recognising how colonial legacies, existing trade regimes, corporate hegemony, and gendered and caste-based power relations have shaped who gets to be seen as a knowledge holder. In many agroecological settings, women and caste-oppressed communities play a critical role in sustaining traditional knowledge. Yet their access to land, finance, and decision-making remains constrained. As Indian agriculture faces the twin challenges of feeding a growing population and adapting to climate change, it is essential to value the perspectives and knowledge that these communities bring to the table. Supporting their leadership should not be seen as an act of charity but a necessary step toward building a resilient, future-proof food system.

A meaningful revival must begin with the active involvement of knowledge holders in shaping research agendas, policies, and educational curriculums. Traditional knowledge should be documented through scientific but participatory methods that centre community voices and consent, rather than extractive research practices. Legal protections must be strengthened to prevent the appropriation or commercial exploitation of traditional knowledge without fair compensation. Public procurement programmes and agri-food subsidies should be restructured to support diverse, low-input farming systems rooted in local knowledge. And finally, a revival must be grounded in institutional humility—an openness to sharing authority and redefining what counts as expertise in the first place.

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Illustration by: Kaushani Mufti

Editor’s note: The last two decades have been witness to the rapid and devastating march of unchecked urbanisation and climate change in India’s cities. Among the first victims of this change is freshwater and access to it—from rivers which sustained local ecosystems, to lakes and groundwater which quenched the thirst of residents. In this series, the Good Food Movement examines the everyday realities of neglect and pollution. It documents the vanishing and revival of water bodies, and community action that made a difference.

In an ever-expanding city of 1.4 crore people, where food, language, and socioeconomic class can range wildly from district to district, no question animates the entirety of Bengaluru quite like this one, even if the danger is not the same for everyone. 

In 2024, the city was reminded of just how close it lives to disaster. Around 40% of Bengaluru relies on groundwater, which plummeted after little rain fell in 2023 and the early months of 2024. Roughly half of the city’s 13,900 borewells ran dry. Private tanker trucks jacked up their prices, forcing residents to pool their cash to buy water just so they could shower every other day.

Even the city’s wealthy residents started using their own bathrooms sparingly, showering at work or at nearby gyms. Those who rely on piped water from the Kaveri River were better off–but they, too, were told to use only wastewater when watering their plants.

The onset of rains in late 2024 and early 2025 has prevented a repeat of the crisis this year, but the base condition of Bengaluru’s water supply is nonetheless getting worse. Still, if the city got through last year largely unscathed, what would it take to bring about a genuine catastrophe? Is there a point at which Bengaluru could actually run out of water? 

If you’re looking for a specific date, you’re going to be disappointed–but the randomness of the actual answer is only a little less concerning. For Bengaluru, a water crisis is never more than a few fallen dominoes away.

Also read: The grave personal cost of pesticide use

Shrinking green cover, unchecked development

Like most other cities in India, Bengaluru’s water supply (or lack thereof) hinges primarily on rainfall. There’s evidence that climate change has actually delivered more rain to the city than it would otherwise have received over the past few years–but this rain often comes in rough torrents that are difficult for the Kaveri and the earth to absorb, as opposed to steady showers that lead to a stable recharge and supply. 

Rampant and unplanned development has not helped. The Kaveri’s water comes from the Western Ghats, where the expansion of coffee plantations and tourist resorts has ripped up so many trees that the ground funneling water into the river can no longer hold much moisture, according to Krishna Raj, a water supply expert at the Institute for Social and Economic Change.

Rain can’t refresh groundwater at the rate it’s being extracted, because the rain simply can’t find the ground.

Chaotic, unplanned development is also an enormous problem for Bengalurueans who get their water from underneath their feet. Bengaluru’s population has exploded since the turn of the millennium, and the city has responded by expanding like an overflowing lake. In 2007, administrators inflated the official size of the city to encompass all the new communities popping up in the outskirts, which were even less planned than the old ones. A lot of these newly included areas were “revenue layouts”—areas that were originally agricultural land that hadn’t been formally converted to residential use. So, at the time, none of these districts had access to a piped water supply. 

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Private tankers filled this gap, plundering groundwater in an ever-expanding radius and selling it to residents at prices that go up as water levels go down. Groundwater is replenishable, but an estimated 93% of the city’s earth will be paved over with asphalt or concrete by the end of 2025. Bengaluru’s green cover has also shriveled from 68% in the 1970s down to just 3% today. Rain can’t refresh groundwater at the rate it’s being extracted, because the rain simply can’t find the ground. It flows down streets and tries to escape through overwhelmed stormwater drains, which is why parts of the city flood about 20 minutes into a decent downpour. 

Also read: RTI Act: A powerful tool in fighting hunger

Unsustainable reliance on groundwater

It’s easy to think of groundwater as an infinite resource. We can’t see it, and officials who have the tools to measure groundwater and its extraction just aren’t doing it accurately. Earlier this year, for instance, the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) reported that extraction is at 800 million litres per day (MLD), while an independent report identified it as 1,392 MLD. There is also a severe lack of adequate monitoring systems and manpower that can span the intricate network of borewells in the city.

What we do know is that groundwater levels are nosediving. According to KC Subhash Chandra, an urban groundwater management expert who used to work for Karnataka’s Department of Mines and Geology, borewells are now being drilled beyond depths of 500 meters. Borewells that deep have likely dug 100-200 meters into Bengaluru’s layer of hard rock, which means they are sucking up possibly ancient water from an underground region that probably can’t be replenished within many human lifetimes. 

Even if the water below the city never dries up, pulling it to the surface will cost more and more money, which will make it increasingly difficult for residents to afford. 

“If the extraction and mining of groundwater is taking place continuously, about three-four times more than the recharge, then naturally there will not be any water,” Chandra says. The city is consistently extracting water from the ground at an unsustainable rate: in 2023, extraction was reported to be over 1300 MLD, when nature only replenishes 148 MLD through green spaces and water bodies. Even if the water below the city never dries up, pulling it to the surface will cost more and more money, which will make it increasingly difficult for residents to afford. 

Groundwater can also be a dangerous thing to rely on even before it begins to run out. Most lakes in Bengaluru are clouded with sewage, and some tankers draw their groundwater from wells that rely on those lakes for their supply, according to Priyanka Jamwal, a water quality expert at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment. "People don’t have any option,” Jamwal says. “Even if groundwater is contaminated, what do we do?”

The prescriptions for these problems are all things you’ve probably read before. Developers should stop chopping down trees in parts of the Western Ghats that are important to the Kaveri. Apartments, hotels, houses, and other buildings should all be fitted with rainwater storage tanks, and the government should make sure that this actually happens. Lakes need to be allowed to expand into areas that have been paved over, and they should be cleaned up so that the water seeping underground is safe to drink. Several experts were at pains to point out that Bengaluru actually gets enough water to satisfy the demands of its booming population–for one, through a stormwater flow of nearly 17,500 hectare metres of rainwater every monsoon season. It just wastes the vast majority of it. 

It would be easy to invoke a sense of urgency about all this if the city’s water supply had a definitive endpoint, but the nebulousness of the truth is in some ways more frightening. 

Also read: The circular bioeconomy movement can change how we see waste

Bengaluru’s water supply is threatened by a range of problems, and these problems can compound at any time to plunge the city into crisis. Let’s say Bengaluru gets very little rain in 2026. People on the outskirts will have to drill more borewells to compensate, depleting the groundwater supply even further. The city manages to get through the year, but 2027 also brings hardly any rain. A few big storms dump massive amounts of water on the city in a matter of hours, but almost all of it rushes off the pavement and into polluted sewers. Borewells were already drying up, and now they are failing at catastrophic rates. The city can’t dig enough new wells to keep up with demand, and suddenly, that demand includes the center of the city, because the piped water supply from the Kaveri is failing. Decades of deforestation have dried out the river’s supply of water, and two years of little rain have turned the artery of South India into a shriveled creek. Bottled water becomes Bengaluru’s last resort, but prices are so high that only the wealthy can afford to stock up, and even they soon struggle to find any.

Bengaluru will not necessarily run out of water in five, 10, or even 100 years, but so long as the city wastes its supply, the possibility of running dry will never be more than a few years away. 

Illustration by: Kaushani Mufti

Produced by Nevin Thomas and Neerja Deodhar

Editor's note: Every farmer who tills the land is an inextricable part of the Indian agriculture story. Some challenge convention, others uplift their less privileged peers, others still courageously pave the way for a more organic, sustainable future. All of them feed the country. In this series, the Good Food Movement highlights the lives and careers of pioneers in Indian agriculture—cultivators, seed preservers, collective organisers and entrepreneurs.

A chameleon rests on the back of a couch; children wander in and out of rooms; and a dog, upon whom tiger stripes have been painted by the children, prances around playfully. At Babulal Dahiya’s home in Madhya Pradesh’s Pithaurabad, which doubles up as a museum of forgotten agricultural tools and traditional cooking utensils, the pace is anything but slow. A crow lands on the porch from time to time, while a few sparrows—a rare sight in India’s cities— chirp away. Outside, cows and their calves peek through the entrance.

An otherwise narrow, quiet lane in the Unchahara tehsil of Satna district turns lively on the early April afternoon when we visit Dahiya. The 83-year-old farmer, poet and retired postmaster is the beating heart of this neighbourhood. He is also a recipient of the Padma Shri (2019), India’s fourth-highest civilian award, for his contributions to agriculture—particularly to organic farming and the conservation of indigenous crop varieties.

When Dahiya speaks, he blends personal memory with documented and undocumented fact, offering a perspective shaped by decades of working in fields, writing, and collecting grassroots knowledge. His home and life reflect a vision where culture, ecology, and rural identity continue to inform each other. As a writer who nurtured a long association with the Adivasi Lok Kala Academy—an MP state initiative to promote tribal culture—Dahiya has published detailed studies on the Kol and Khairwar communities backed by extensive research.

The octogenarian is frail; he climbs up a flight of stairs to show us the three rooms he has turned into a museum, which leaves him momentarily breathless. He pauses to rest before slowly resuming, carefully walking this writer through the many objects and memories he has preserved over the years.

“I inherited farming,” he says, as we sit down to talk, “We have been farmers for generations. My father practised agriculture, as did my grandfather before him.” As a boy of eight or nine, he was sent to another town to study, returning home only during fasli chutti [harvest holidays]. It was the early years of India’s independence. “Back then, we had harvest holidays from Dussehra to Diwali—nearly 28 days long. I would do everything that children could do to help,” he recalls, "Hum ek mah chidiyon ki takai aur dhan ki gahai karte the aur damri chalate the. [For a month, I used to guard the crops from birds, pound the paddy, and operate the manual threshing device]."

Observing these fields became a form of education for a young Dahiya. He revisits memories of how sorghum was often intercropped with lentils and other staples like green gram, black gram, pigeon pea, sesame, and kenaf. Those early experiences, he believes, taught him more about agriculture than any textbook could—simple yet rarely documented lessons such as which crop attracts which species of bird or animal. Parrots, for instance, were known to go straight for the sorghum. 

He says in jest, “Kauwe ka rang kaala hota hai, ye humko padhkar nahi pata chala. Woh humko kauwe ko dekhkar pata chala. [I didn’t learn that a crow’s plumage is black by reading it in a book. I learned it by seeing the crow].”

Also read: A man dreamt of a forest. It became a model for the world

The decline of indigenous crops

The passage of time made Dahiya witness to the drastic changes and losses the surrounding ecosystem was undergoing. But the loss that felt most personal was of indigenous rice varieties—which faced the highest risk. His family farmed on two plots: one in Pithaurabad, and another in Birpur, three kilometres away. Through his chronicling of folklore, he saw how traditional mixed cropping was being replaced by monocultures. “The farms and fields weren’t as colourful as they used to be,” says Dahiya, recalling the decline of diverse dhan (rice) varieties.

This shift came about a decade after the Green Revolution. It was the introduction of IR-8, a high-yield rice strain developed by the International Rice Research Institute, in 1967—first introduced in Andhra Pradesh, and later across the country—that marked a turning point in India’s farming history.

Dahiya acknowledges the necessity of the Green Revolution in its time. “The country struggled with famine and diseases such as smallpox, malaria, and plague. We needed a stronger food system. I adopted its principles, too. But, as the saying goes, ‘Science is a blessing, but beyond a point, it can become a curse,’” he adds. 

No one anticipated the long-term effects of what was deemed a ‘revolution’. “Puri ki puri dhane khatam ho gayee [The entire stock of traditional rice varieties disappeared]. It was a blessing until the 1990s.” By the mid-to-late 1990s, he realised the urgent need to preserve native rice seeds. This marked the beginning of the work he is known and recognised for: beginning with 15 varieties, by the late 2000s, he had collected 110, and now his bank boasts of around 200.

While walking this writer past rows of seed jars, Dahiya pauses at certain varieties, opens a jar and spreads the grains in his creased palm. He explains their traits patiently, peeling back the husk to show the grain inside. He picks Galari, named for its husk that resembles a myna’s eye—rounded, bordered, and striking. Then he reaches out for Kalavati, a black rice with long spikes and a rough husk; inside is a dark brown grain with a lighter tip, akin to a glinting bead. “These are nature’s marvels,” he notes, referring to their diverse qualities and their ability to thrive in different conditions.

In a handmade booklet, he writes: “Like soybean, it’s hard to trace when or where a grain originated... But we can confidently say paddy is the oldest grain in our country... Today, there are many hybrid varieties developed through research. But in ancient times, it wasn’t scientists who discovered them, but farming ancestors who brought them from the forests into fields. The wild ancestors are gone; what remains, survives only with farmers. That’s why saving traditional varieties matters... If even one disappears, so do its traits preserved for thousands of years in tune with this land’s ecology.”

Suresh Dahiya, a journalist and the veteran farmer’s son, talks about a variety called Saathi or Sathiya, known for its short growth cycle. It typically ripens within 60 days of planting—the characteristic that gave it the name. “This makes it ideal for regions with short growing seasons or water scarcity, such as Bundelkhand and parts of Uttar Pradesh. It’s also useful for farmers aiming for multiple harvests a year,” he explains.

“The seed bank is regularly visited by farmers across the country,” Suresh says. “Most come looking for specific seeds—rice or wheat varieties. Some, like the rice variety, Ram Bhog, are both popular and hard to find now. There are about 15 such varieties.” Farmers from faraway villages and towns also write in to request seeds, which are gladly dispatched to them by Dahiya and Suresh, with the courier cost covered by the recipient.

Conservation costs run deep

“The work he was doing was important, and he had the support of our whole family,” says Suresh. Over the last three years, the 59-year-old has taken over his father’s seed-saving effort. While two acres of their farmland in Pithaurabad are reserved for seed preservation, the remaining five are leased out on batai basis (sharecropping). “We grow 25 wheat varieties,” Suresh says, pointing to the ripening stalks.

It takes an investment of Rs 5,000–7,000 per season to grow wheat, he notes, but preserving over 200 rice varieties has become a far more expensive project—around Rs 60,000 per season in recent years. This cost is not just due to the larger number of paddy varieties, but also the technical demands of rice cultivation, which calls for more water, labour, and care—especially since each traditional variety has its own distinct sowing and harvesting cycle.

Financial aid for Dahiya’s conservation efforts has been minimal. Around 2010, the Madhya Pradesh Rajya Jaiv Vividhta Board/Madhya Pradesh State Biodiversity Board helped set up the seed bank, but beyond that, state support has been scarce. For over two decades, Dahiya has sustained his work through an NGO, the Srajan Samajik Sanskritik Evam Sahityik Manch.

“We receive some funds, but they barely cover the basics. We often dip into our own pockets,” Suresh admits. Sadly, Dahiya’s Padma Shri honour has not moved the needle on this front. What’s more disheartening, he says, is that despite growing research backing traditional and organic farming, the larger agricultural ecosystem still prioritises high yield over awareness and sustainability.

Also read: How an Alappuzha coir exporter nurtured a one-acre forest

The ‘yield’ dilemma

A persistent obsession with higher yields has—and continues to—do more harm than people realise, Dahiya says. He recalls memories of a 2012 exhibition in Delhi where he showcased 110 native rice varieties: a group of scientists, including plant geneticist and agronomist M.S. Swaminathan, visited his stall. One of them asked, “Which variety delivers the highest yield?” Dahiya explained that traditional rice varieties often yield about 80–85% in the first year, drop to 25–30% in the second, and give nearly nothing by the third if seeds are reused. “That’s how it has worked for thousands of years,” he told the group, “They’ve survived (all these years) because they’re strong in other ways—by adapting to the soil, warding off pests and surviving the seasons. If you chase only yield, you’ll kill off these crops in three years.” Some of the scientists were embarrassed by their line of inquiry, while Swaminathan smiled at his comment, Dahiya says.

Unlike modern high-yielding varieties (HYVs) introduced in India during the Green Revolution, which often demand new seed stock each season in order to perform well, traditional landraces (old, local crop types that farmers have saved for eons) are more resilient to local conditions, but may see some natural decline if not carefully selected and saved. The exchange, Dahiya felt, underlined a deeper tension: between sustainable seed saving practices and the push for uniform, industrial-scale production that has steadily eroded biodiversity. The problem has grown multifold since Dahiya’s interaction with the scientists.

The resultant fallout

“Look at what this race for higher yields has led to. Our water is gone, the trees and plants have dried up, even orchards have withered. We’re living under a curse. The consequences are so far-reaching that our villages have been cut off from the larger economy. Crop prices have crashed,” Dahiya rebukes. It’s not just farmers who have suffered; the livelihoods of agricultural labourers, too, have declined. A plunge in income levels has made them flee to cities, he remarks.

“Agriculture today belongs to the seths [capitalists],” he says. This is in stark contrast to how things were in the past, when a sense of collectivism brought together a village; where grain was shared with the oil presser, cobbler, blacksmith, carpenter—all those who supported the farmer in return. What remained with the farmer was sold or bartered in the town.

Now, Dahiya rues, every step a farmer takes is controlled by a different seth in the system. Seed agents, fuel suppliers, fertiliser sellers, pesticide dealers, harvest contractors, and middlemen at the market. “Like the cow whose milk is sold, and whose calf gets only a measly 20%, the farmer is left with next to nothing.”

The problem, he says, goes beyond those who work in the fields. With the industrialisation of agriculture, the many professions that once directly supported farming—such as carpenters, blacksmiths, and weavers—have been disappearing, as have the tools they fashioned and used. Carpenters don’t make mogris (pestles) or dedhas (traditional ploughs) anymore. “This is why I began putting together and preserving over 300 farming objects and tools in my museum,” he says.

The process of collecting these objects has been long and slow. When people heard about Dahiya’s vision, some came forward with the tools and items now displayed in the museum. Other exhibits had to be specially made. Dahiya had to find workers who possessed the skills  to create replicas while knowledge about the tools was still available. “Only about 20 percent of what you see in the museum is still in use,” he says. “Most of the stone tools, especially, have gone out of use entirely.” The one that can still be found in homes is the pichkariya—a small, rounded stone used to lightly crush cooked dal. Dahiya also draws our attention to wooden implements like the khat-khata (tied around the neck of cattle), dhera (used to tie cattle ropes) and ghota (a cylindrical tool used to administer medicine to animals).

In one corner, an old kolhu stands upside down. Dahiya shows it to us with pride and explains how the traditional oil press worked—where the presser stood, where the bull was tied, where the oil dripped from, and how the whole system came together. He has been trying to get a palki made for a few years now. “But the workers who could make one are either too old now, or have passed away. Their children never learned the craft—not even enough to make a sample.”

The museum sees at least one visitor every day. Sometimes, a few school buses show up and suddenly, there are hundreds of children walking around, surprised by things they’ve never seen before. “Some have suggested that I should move the museum out of my house,” he says, “but that would require more space and more funds.”

Where literature and agricultural wisdom meet

Literature intrigued Dahiya as he grew up. Writing in the Bagheli dialect across fiction and non-fiction, he has documented traditional ballads and idioms tied to tribal festivals and farming. One saying he often quotes is about kargi, an endangered and traditional variety of rice. “Dhaan boye kargi, suar khaaye na samdhi.” Its black husk is covered in spines, making it unpalatable to wild boars (an ongoing problem in forested farming areas)—and unsuitable for serving to in-laws or guests, who are traditionally offered fine white rice varieties like Vishnu Bhog, as a mark of respect.

More age-old proverbs followed in our conversation. “Teen paak do paani, pak aayin kutuk rani,” he recites, referring to how little millet (kutki) ripens with just two spells of rain in three fortnights. “Sama jetha ann kahaye, sab anaaj se aage aaye,” describes sama (also little millet) as the eldest grain, ready to harvest in just 45 days. “Sagman, sarahi, dahiman, rana…assi baras na hoye purana,” compares kodo millet (rana, the ‘king of grains’) to sturdy timbers like sagwaan (teak), sarahi (Indian Kino) and dahiman (Indian laurel), all said to last 80 years without ageing.

Also watch: How women in this tiny Naga village are safeguarding local seeds

Building for the future

During a seed-saving drive in 2017, Dahiya travelled across 40 districts in Madhya Pradesh. “He would stay overnight with farmers to learn about their lives and problems,” says Suresh. This journey significantly expanded their seed bank. One friend, Ram Lotan Kushwaha, contributed over 32 varieties of lauki (bottle gourd), more than two dozen types of brinjal, and at least 15 tomato varieties from his farm.

Yet, a return to traditional practices remains a steep, uphill task. “We work on a small scale because we’re driven. There’s no policy support, no larger framework to connect these efforts. But it is urgent,” says Suresh. Sourcing and hunting for traditional grains is harder than ever, he adds. “Fifteen or twenty years ago, you could still get your hands on a few. Now, it’s nearly impossible.”

Dahiya finds this development extremely concerning. “India has a growing reliance on merely three grains—rice, wheat, and maize, of which high-yield varieties are preferred.” Not only has the disappearance of coarse grains (mote anaaj) narrowed the scope of people’s diets, but it has also contributed to a rise in lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and obesity. “Previously, people had ‘family doctors’. Now, in order to reclaim their health, they need ‘family farmers’—trusted cultivators who can grow organic, local grains for them,” he says with a chuckle. As Suresh takes forward the work he began, Dahiya remains hopeful—not all will be lost.

Produced by Nevin Thomas and Neerja Deodhar

Keshwari is a 32-year-old married woman who is employed as a sanitation worker. She was brought to Delhi from the Bhagalpur village in Bihar, to earn a living and support her family. While in Delhi, she was diagnosed with kidney stones by her family doctor and advised to get surgery.

In her neighbourhood’s Mohalla Clinic, Keshwari sits back after another spell of dizziness—a frequent sign of her weakness. Her surgery was extremely expensive, and treatment had been visibly delayed. But she is not in the clinic for herself—she needs to get her son vaccinated. She doesn’t trust the city’s doctors. “There’s no support here; who would help if something went wrong?” Keshwari doesn’t plan on returning to Bhagalpur in the near future. As for her health, it is another sacrifice she is willing to make. 

Haseena Begum, a 40-year-old married woman, has worked in a public hospital in Malviya Nagar all through the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, after four months of excessive bleeding during her menstrual cycles, Begum knew something wasn’t right. She took the day off from work and travelled to a government hospital in South Delhi, still bleeding heavily. “ I didn’t want to go,” admits Begum. “I am shy and I don't like the way they touch me.”

When she did see the doctor, her experience didn’t quiet her anxieties. “She barely looked at me. I told her I was uncomfortable with getting a check-up, I had never had a doctor [gynaecologist] check me before. She started to scold me, saying that I was wasting her time.” Eventually, Begum went to a local pir (spiritual guide), who gave her ‘healing water’ to alleviate her symptoms; she hasn’t been to a doctor since. When this writer asks her why, she says, “Humein aur kuch nahi chahiye, sirf pyaar se baat karein. [I’m not asking for much, only to be addressed kindly].

These incidents are not isolated. 

For the first time in ten years, the rate of hospitalisation in India has fallen. Data from National Sample Surveys conducted in the last decade show that in 2014, India had 31.5 hospitalisations for every 1,000 people. By 2017-18, this number fell to 28. This may seem optimistic, but experts caution that it only points to a decline in the utilisation of public healthcare services. Fewer people are visiting public healthcare centres—a reality complicated by another gaping statistic: fewer women are seeking medical treatment from these centres.

More women are paying out-of-pocket at private healthcare centres, raking in debt. They are turning to alternative medicine, or simply avoiding diagnosis and treatment until it's too late.

The skewed sex ratio of patients in public hospital registers like AIIMS point to ‘missing women’. While these realities have played out in the foreground, cancer-related mortalities in India have increased specifically among women in the last decade.

So, where do the ailing women of this country go? More women are paying out-of-pocket at private healthcare centres, raking in debt. They are turning to alternative medicine, or simply avoiding diagnosis and treatment until it's too late. This is happening for myriad reasons, many of which culminate into one glaring truth: women are losing trust in Delhi’s public healthcare system. 

In a study conducted jointly by AIIMS—the largest tertiary care hospital in India—and the Harvard Medical Centre in 2016, the authors went through the outpatient records at AIIMS for the entire year of 2016, and found an eerie gap. Only 37% of the patients were women, against 63% men. This suggests a sex ratio of 1.69, whereas the average sex ratio of the populations that they served was 1.09. Ideally, both these numbers should be consistent. The data showed a whole chunk of ‘missing’ women, suggesting that there may be a significant percentage of women who just don’t visit the hospital at all—and don’t get access to healthcare in the process.  

Apart from systemic issues of financial dependence, community taboos, and a general lack of awareness about women’s bodies, there seems to be another reason why women remain inconsistent in accessing healthcare. A factor that persists even after these barriers are removed: a lack of trust grounded in disrespectful care. Much of this begins with the dents in the country’s health infrastructure. 

The disappearance of primary healthcare

For instance, an over-dependence on secondary and tertiary healthcare institutions have left urban populations bereft of local clinics, where they could build trust with the medical staff. 

In Delhi, schemes like the Mohalla Clinic programme—launched by the Aam Aadmi Party government in 2015—had helped bridge this gap to an extent. Studies show that these clinics did lead to increased annual patient visits and relief for larger public health institutions, especially with respect to patients from lower-income groups. But with news of recent closures of the clinics, the gaps in primary healthcare may widen once again.

Public health experts suggest that the issue is the paucity of public healthcare at the primary level, which leads to secondary and tertiary institutions like AIIMS and Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital absorbing the pressure. “Primary Health Centres (PHCs) were part of the rural imagination, and when these areas became urbanised rapidly, such centers couldn’t cater to the high density of the population. The urban primary health care system requires some rethinking,” says Dr. Nandita Bhan, a professor at the OP Jindal’s School of Public Health in Sonipat.

Despite being the national capital, Delhi’s public healthcare system is a microcosm of the country’s medical framework—overwhelmed, stretched for resources, and unevenly distributed.

Primary healthcare in Delhi was envisaged with schemes like the Mahila Mohalla Clinic programme. They intended to ease access of patients, thus also increasing detectability of health issues—particularly women’s cancer and other gynaecological issues. 

However, as suggested by a 2017 report, only about 2.9% of the 1020 women studied had undergone cervical cancer screening in the capital. Mridu Gupta, CEO of CAPED India, a cancer awareness non-profit in Gurgaon, suggests that women’s lack of access to healthcare isn’t linear. “For women to have trust, they must have some autonomy over their bodies—dependence on male members of the family to even visit clinics or get tested and, a lack of awareness about their own bodies often pushes them to first try out household nuskas to manage symptoms before they even approach a doctor.” The situation worsens when hospitals are ill-equipped to care for women, lacking female doctors or adequate time and resources to effectively deal with these maladies. “Especially when women present with heavy bleeding or extreme pain, male doctors tend to dismiss them as simply period symptoms,” Gupta adds. 

Despite being the national capital, Delhi’s public healthcare system is a microcosm of the country’s medical framework—overwhelmed, stretched for resources, and unevenly distributed. Dr. Bhan adds, “With women’s health, we often see delays in testing and formal diagnoses since they choose to access informal or traditional care facilities which may not be fully medically adept at handling their conditions.”

Also read: How food inflation is squeezing Indian households

Trust and reproductive health 

Research on disrespectful care in India has only recently come to be explored, focusing on maternity care in the North-East and Uttar Pradesh. Sonam and Babita, two government sweepers in their late 30s, have been residents of Sardar Nagar in West Delhi all their lives. After the deliveries of their children at a public hospital in the city, the duo has not stepped foot in the institution again. “It was my first child and I was clueless—all I was told was that I should come to the hospital when I had labour pains. They didn’t even do an ultrasound to see that my baby was stuck in the umbilical cord; eventually I needed a cesarean delivery,” Babita claims. 

These experiences left them feeling disrespected and uncared for. The hours after their deliveries did not provide much relief either. Without stitches, in pain and covered in blood, they lay there for hours. Since then, both Sonam and Babita prefer to go to private clinics in their neighbourhood, when they can afford it. Their examples echo a larger trend: nearly 79% of outpatient visits, particularly in urban areas, are catered to by private facilities—leading to high out-of-pocket expenditures. For many women, the cost of being heard was a cost worth bearing. 

Dr. Jyoti Sharma of the Indian Institute of Public Health (IIPH) raised the issue of screening for cervical and breast cancer. “We see women being diagnosed in the second or third stage, after having heavy bleeding for months.” According to the National Health Profile 2019, there were approximately 60,078 deaths due to cervical cancer in India in 2018. Additionally, an estimated 87,000 women died from breast cancer in India in 2020, with Delhi accounting for the highest number of cases in North India. Dr. Bhan added, “This may be due to better screening at tertiary facilities, and more women coming to the capital city for diagnoses, but the taboo around cancer also surrounds the issue of delayed access.” 

For many women, the cost of being heard was a cost worth bearing.

If financial access and the lack of proximity aren’t enough, there’s also a fear of cancer. “There’s the attached social stigma which discourages women from going to the doctor. Women with cancer are made to avoid social gatherings or joyous occasions. Women’s health is already seen as expendable, often being seen as less valuable than the health of children or the man of the house,” says Dr. Bhan.

There’s also a false association with the hereditary nature of some kinds of cancer, pushing women to avoid diagnoses and save their children from social isolation. Another stigma that can be extremely dangerous links preventative care like the HPV vaccine to a woman’s sexual health—and this may cause many women to avoid the inoculation despite awareness, putting them at a higher risk of cervical cancer in the future. 

Mridu Gupta also says that detection for most women’s health issues is often delayed, from endometriosis to cancer. “The only solution to mistrust is communication, but doctors are so overworked that information to the patient is relayed on a need-to-know basis.”

The brewing distrust in the medical profession has deeper roots. Dependent on community experiences, traditional cultural cures, and social stigma, many people avoid seeking conventional medical care. But this is exacerbated when it comes to women in urban areas, who are also limited by a lack of financial confidence, proximity, limited independence, and awareness. Operating within these limitations, it becomes necessary for governments to not only develop means of access, but also make them easy. For women, effective care involves not just the removal of physical barriers to healthcare access, but also fostering relationships of care and respect between patients and doctors.

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Buying groceries is often an exercise in guilt management. Consider the shopping list for a day of modern diet-approved healthy eating: seasonal berries for a delicious, silky smoothie for breakfast; maybe a block of feta cheese to be crumbled into a refreshing salad to cut through the cool, crunchy vegetables; and some chicken for a protein-packed dinner. For snacking, a protein bar and some roasted makhanas have you covered. While this somewhat satisfies an average adult’s nutritional requirements for the day, a pressing issue lingers: the exorbitant bill, which will ring up to roughly Rs. 500, at the very least.

There seems to be an unspoken pact an individual must make if they desire to simply eat “clean”—a good chunk of their income will be spent acquiring the best ingredients. The average Indian can’t afford that. In fact, the average Indian spends only about Rs. 2,500 on groceries every month–and that includes fruits, vegetables, pulses, dairy, processed foods, meat and seafood. 

And so, between inflation, reduced disposable income, increased overall expenditure, and a mostly sedentary life, “healthy” food delivered to one’s doorstep can appear to be a cure-all. Eating a high-fibre quinoa and avocado salad from a leading restaurant chain at Rs. 465 appears cheaper and more convenient than preparing it yourself, for a one- or two-person household.

An understanding of affordable, value-for-money food options that fulfil nutritious requirements is a must when nearly half of per capita spending for an urban resident goes towards food.

But, there may be more nuance to this than appears at the surface. Nutritious, carefully prepared home-cooked meals beat convenience any day. Healthy takeout options can seem cheaper and worth spending money on because of common misconceptions around what we deem as “healthy.” But it’s not just that: when you end up buying large quantities of source ingredients (a lot of which might go to waste), spend time prepping for every meal, and spend money on expensive, healthful groceries, takeout food will easily seem like the more cost-efficient option. 

An understanding of affordable, value-for-money food options that fulfil nutritious requirements is a must when nearly half of per capita spending for an urban resident goes towards food. Unlike in the past, when raw cereals accounted for the majority of food expenditures, processed goods—which include packaged foods, beverages, and purchased cooked meals—now account for the majority of food expenditures in both rural and urban areas. It’s hard to immediately identify it, but you may be spending more on takeout, cumulatively, instead of saving money.

Switching to easy-to-prep, homemade meals may not just be healthier, but prove to lighten the monthly expenditure, too.

Also read: Whey to go: A complete guide to protein

Why is my food expensive? 

In October 2024, the year-on-year food inflation in India hit an all-time high, touching 10.87%. Particularly, it was the price of the vegetables, fruits, oils and fats that shot up. Since the beginning of this year, though, prices have stabilised–in fact, according to Trading Economics, food costs in the country have experienced a 3.75% increase year-on-year in February 2025, the least since May 2023, following a 6.02% rise in January. 

It’s the reasons for this sharp hike, here, that is most important: supply disruptions, weather and rain patterns, regulatory policies. The commodities that recorded the highest increase were oils and fats (16.4%) and fruits (14.8%). Since August of 2024, FMCG companies have been reporting price hikes for household essentials due to the rising costs of base items like palm oil and copra. This hike is owed not only to inflation, but rising geopolitical tensions and unexpected climate conditions. Furthermore, an increase in import duty on vegetable oil in October acted as a contributor. 

Another worrying factor is that fruit inflation in India increased from 8.6 cent in December to a decadal high of 12.2 cent in January. This inflation, along with the country’s demand for imported exotic fruits, is attributed to higher fruit prices. Coconut prices are at a seven-year high, and pineapples and water chestnuts follow suit. Indians are already short on fruit consumption: fruits and vegetables contribute to less than 3% energy levels against the required 8-10% energy levels in urban areas. Experts point to rising demand, higher imports and a weaker rupee.

And while food inflation will always bobble up and down–as it did earlier this year–the reasons will persist. It becomes all the more imperative to take out the time and effort to eat better, at home. 

Cheaper takeout might seem a better option at the time, but subsidised food means there’s a compromise on other factors: hygiene, quality of ingredients and unfair wages to the workers. To make sure you can really eat healthy and save money, here are two things to consider: your shopping habits and meal prepping.

Also read: Meal prep: How Indian kitchens can optimise time, taste

Shopping habits matter

What we consider as healthy is often expensive, imported food that costs us twice as much as local grocery items. Indians are buying more and more exotic fruits and vegetables. Mandarin orange imports went up to 33% in the first eight months of 2024. Cranberry, famous for its juice that helps with PMS symptoms and even UTIs for AFAB individuals, saw a drastic 159% demand; New Delhi is reported to have imported $6.68 million worth of the fruit. Avocado imports doubled in the last year! 

This inordinate demand is also contributing to extensive farming globally, making it hard for locals to access food items indigenous to them. One can, then, turn to local produce that provides us with the same benefits. Here’s a look at some cheaper alternatives to trending superfoods; keep in mind that balancing out the two helps you meet specific nutrition goals, too, aside from benefiting from a price difference. 

• Greek yogurt < Curd

Plain greek yogurt is protein rich and offers calcium, vitamin B12, and potassium. Homemade curd, though, is just as beneficial, even with a differing nutritional index. It acts as a great probiotic.

• Blueberry < Jamun (Indian blackberry)

Blueberry contains numerous antioxidants and phytochemicals, vitamin C and fiber. It improves gut health, reduces inflammation, and has cancer-fighting benefits. Alternatively, Jamun is not only grown locally, but also offers anti-inflammatory benefits and contains essential nutrients like vitamin C, iron and potassium.

• Avocado < Nuts and seeds

Avocado is full of vitamins and minerals, along with beneficial fats that give satiety. While it is difficult to find the perfect alternative, nutritionists turn to a range of options like a mix of nuts and seeds that would fulfil vitamin, fibre and fat requirements

• Chia seeds < Flax seeds

Chia offers antioxidants, fibre, omega-3 acids that allow for better gut health. On the other hand, flaxseeds offer very similar benefits, at a lower cost. 

What we consider as healthy is often expensive, imported food that costs us twice as much as local grocery items.

The idea is to buy seasonal and buy local: quick commerce apps, now a go-to grocer for the urban populace, propose an easy fix to needing groceries last-minute, but they also add to over-consumption. You often purchase more than you need, buying 1 kg of tomatoes instead of 500 g because there’s a combo offer on onions, tomatoes and potatoes–or to meet a minimum cart value and avoid delivery fees. The prices of the same vegetables at your local mandi are not that different–if anything, quick-commerce apps add various fees. Additionally, there’s no guarantee on quality. If spoiled produce is delivered, it’s a waste of money. Some quick commerce apps don’t offer redressal, just credit points. Hygiene is also a compromise. 

The luxurious unseasonal item also comes at a hidden cost: the produce is picked before the harvest season and then transported to reach the consumer’s nearest retailers. You’re compromising on taste, flavour and nutrient value while also paying extra for the long journey your food had to take. 

Alternatively, buying from local vegetable and fruit sellers not only allows you to manage the quantity, but also check the vegetables and fruits for ripeness or any defects.

Also read: The promises—and perils—of Indian aquaculture

Rethinking meal prep

A realistic goal is to optimise healthy food options by avoiding takeout and knowing what you can work with. That’s where meal-prep comes in: it improves our relationship with food, increases convenience and lends higher nutritional quality to the meal. It can seem like a bit of a hassle: meal prepping can lead you to buy groceries in bulk–and inevitably, wasting a chunk of it. But a few tips and tricks can make the process fun, efficient and effective. 

1. Prioritise: The best way forward is to look at what you have in your pantry. As blogger Polly Barks points out, meal prepping is like a game of building blocks. While planning, see how the available items fit into the nutrient category suitable for a well-balanced meal. Define your sources of protein, carbohydrates, vitamins and fibre. The next step is to see what you need to use up faster. Do you have a lot of rice or eggs lying around? Your next meal could be an egg curry paired with some steamed rice and an easy salad with a curd base. Consider the perishability of your food items to avoid good produce or even freshly cooked food going to waste. 

2. Plan it out: Once you have made sense of what you have at hand, you can figure out what you need to purchase. While plenty of health and fitness advice will tell you that it’s better to plan around a week, it might be easier and more beneficial to make three-day plans. Buy less, buy fresh, and use it up as soon as possible. Creating a list incorporating all the items you need to use up before a cycle of prepping ends is imperative to ensuring zero waste. You may have to freeze some vegetables after chopping them up and keep the cycle’s marinades in as well. 

3. Be flexible and creative: It is easy for meal prepping to become monotonous and unrealistic. The workaround is to be creative with the base you have at hand. Marinated herb chicken can turn into a pasta, a sandwich, a one-pot rice dish, and even a cool summer salad. Leftovers make for easy meals too. A chicken curry is often converted into a pulao in Indian households—all you have to do is put rice and the curry into a pressure cooker. Dry subzis make for great stuffed parathas. 

A well-organised, economical meal plan filled with simple, diverse dishes is a step towards eating healthy without putting a dent in your wallet. 

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(Illustration by: Khyati)