Editor's Note: This article is part of the Good Food Movement's series to spotlight India's summer fruits. Here, we analyse both the ways in which their cultivation expands a farmer's horizons, and the challenges of growing them in a changing climate.
Tongues stained purple, and mouths teased by a sweet, tart flavour—this is how 67-year-old jamun farmer Prakash Kini remembers the summers of his childhood in Maharashtra’s Bahadoli. The village, situated in Palghar district, on the outskirts of metropolitan Mumbai, is also eponymously called Jambhulgaon. For a brief window between April and June, it comes alive with harvest activity; families collect, sort, and transport the jamun fruit (Syzygium cumini) growing on trees in every corner to nearby urban markets. For generations, it has sustained entire households belonging to the Agri Koli community, with families relying on a short but intense selling season to earn a significant portion of their annual income. While the men are engaged in plucking the fruit and transporting it, the women are responsible for selling it and turning it into value-added products.
Maharashtra is India’s largest jamun producing state, with cultivation concentrated in the state’s Konkan region. The ‘Konkan Bahadoli’ variety, recognised by the Maharashtra Agricultural Department in the early 2000s, is the most coveted, even winning a GI tag in 2023. It is oblong, succulent, has a white-pinkish pulp and fewer seeds.
For generations, it has sustained entire households belonging to the Agri Koli community, with families relying on a short but intense selling season to earn a significant portion of their annual income.
Produce from Maharashtra’s jamun capital has become a fast favourite among consumers, fetching a premium. However, Jambhulgaon’s economy, primed by this seasonal fruit, now finds itself in a lurch. The vagaries of climate, a market demanding scale and consistency, and difficulties in farmer organisation stand in the way of a legacy.
Bahadoli sits at the confluence of the Surya and Vaitarna rivers, whose floodplains are home to fertile alluvial soil. In their pursuit of a GI tag over a decade and a half, farmers dug into archival documents to piece together a history of how their village came to be associated with jamuns. “We collected ancestral property papers from generational jamun-farming families. In the process, we found that one Bala Joshi had planted the first two trees in 1885,” says Kini. “Perhaps they were carried in on the tides of the floods and deposited here, and then birds spread the seeds all across the village.”
Paddy was once Bahadoli’s primary crop—for sale and sustenance. “A few jamun trees stood on baandhs [the raised edges of fields], but our parents discouraged us from growing them because rice couldn’t thrive in the shaded canopy of these trees,” says Madhav Prabhakar, 72, another jamun farmer. “We had lived through the 1972 drought and famine, we couldn’t afford a bad harvest.”
There was a scarce market for the fruit at the time. The village was isolated from Mumbai, and jamuns were consumed only at home along with mangoes. The purple fruits were converted into liquor, while raw mangoes were dried and prepared as the amboshi souring agent, the Agri-Koli community’s kokum equivalent.
Eventually, some farmers started experimenting with selling the fruit in the 1980s. “My father, along with some of his friends, began transporting jamuns across the river in hodhis [small hand-rowed boats] to the Vasai-Virar phata [the junction connecting Mumbai’s northern-most suburbs],” says Kini. There, intermediaries (colloquially referred to as bhaiyyas) would decide the rate of each batch—selling for as low as Rs. 4 per kg.
Today, nearly every farmer in Bahadoli has anywhere between 10 to 25 jamun trees growing in his backyard and fields. Over a thousand families farm jamun across about 70 acres in the village, with some trees dating back to over a century. A mature tree can bear between 50-80 kg of fruit every season, with each kilo fetching anywhere between Rs. 1000 to Rs. 2500.
It is sweet success that comes after much patience and long-term planning. “The tree takes around 10 to 15 years to mature and become economically viable,” says Jagdish Patil, Senior Field Officer, Palghar Agricultural Department. “However, it had the potential to become a major crop in the Konkan region. With this aim, the Palghar Agriculture Department organised a Jamun Mahotsav in Bahadoli in 2004 (and every year until 2008) to promote and scale up its cultivation.” The famed Konkan Bahadoli variety was popularised in this festival.
Today, nearly every farmer in Bahadoli has anywhere between 10 to 25 jamun trees growing in his backyard and fields.
Jamun trees were hitherto cultivated via seeds. The introduction of grafting techniques (a process of propagation by which a young bud is fused with a rooted plant, such that their tissues merge and grow as one) during the festival enabled the propagation of superior, true-to-type varieties, improving uniformity and yield. State support in the form of sapling distribution, workshopping new ways of growing and caring for jamun trees, and guidance with storage and processing laid the groundwork for scaling jamun as a commercial horticultural crop in the region.
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Every summer, this glistening violet fruit arrives in fruit markets across India. Apart from its distinct astringent taste, it is also valued for its many medicinal properties, from controlling blood sugar and managing diabetes, to lowering lipid levels in the body and boosting iron content.
The Dr. Balasaheb Sawant Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth in Ratnagiri, in partnership with the Palghar Agricultural Department, began conducting workshops for Bahadoli’s farmers 2015 onwards, to train them in better practices. Farmers were encouraged to use organic fertilisers, and even now, many trees in the village are coated in the green hue of simple medication comprising chuna, rock phosphate and jeevamrutha.
While the aim had been to bring jamun farmers together, formalise supply chains, and help them make value additions, things played out differently on-ground.
In 2018, the Jambhul Utpaadak Shetkari Gath (Jamun Farmers’ Collective) was established as a farmers’ outfit with state support, with Prakash Kini at its helm. While the aim had been to bring jamun farmers together, formalise supply chains, and help them make value additions, things played out differently on-ground. “Dahanu’s chikoo had earned a GI tag,” says Patil, “and I wanted Bahadoli’s farmers to mobilise themselves for a similar effort. The establishing of a producers’ union was a step in this direction.”
A GI tag would not only help the eponymously named jamun get recognition, but would ideally also protect the people and land behind it—and instill a sense of pride in them. “Working towards the application for a GI tag helped us learn a lot about the fruit’s ancestry to this village. We used the Devgadh Hapus mango as an example to understand the benefits that this could bring,” Kini says. Farmers also compiled a resource book tracing the history of the Konkan Bahadoli jamun and insights gleaned from the jambhul mahotsavs, agricultural officers, and scientists—both to support their GI tag application and to serve as a one-stop cultivation guide.
Previously, bhaiyyas would offer the village’s jamuns as ‘taste tests’ to consumers, disguising the fact that the fruits actually being sold (which were smaller and more sour) were sourced from places like Nashik and Badlapur. The GI tag would help tackle this ‘identity theft.’ “No one will be able to pass off counterfeit produce under the Bahadoli jamun’s name now,” Kini adds.
What made the jamun truly Bahadoli’s? The Vidyapeeth worked with farmers to conduct soil tests, assess different parameters of the fruit such as size, shape and pulp-to-seed ratio, to establish its distinctness. “However, only a few farmers incorporated what we practised during the sessions,” says Dr. Lahanu Gabhale, Associate Professor of Horticulture, Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth, who has worked with Palghar’s farmers for over a decade.
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The journey towards earning a GI tag was one where farmers were disjunct from realising the full promise of their produce, and how intellectual property tools could help play a role in this. “Getting farmers together for meetings, and convincing them of the benefits of a gath was a mammoth task in itself. Only about 25-30 farmers attended the first meeting,” recalls Kini. Farmers remaining suspicious of administrative intermediaries and village politics along caste lines meant that the Gath remained a fragmented effort carried on the shoulders of a few village elders—a reality that persists today.
Enthusiasm remains low, and the farmers are somewhat divided. In the process of obtaining a GI tag, Kini, Prabhakar and a few others carried the season’s best jamuns and different associated products, such as wine, wadi and barfis and powder made from crushing the seeds that aids in managing diabetes. The farmers, the state, and the scientists are united on one opinion: the awarding of the GI tag has not resulted in any benefits materialising yet—an unfortunate reality observed in the case of more than one product across India. And how will they, asks Patil. “The Gath needs to raise a minimum amount of money to translate some of these benefits into practice,” he says.
Jamuns are a perilously perishable fruit. They must be consumed within 2-3 days of being plucked from the trees. Jambhulgaon’s farmers line their tokris with sarees to prevent them from getting squashed during transport. “We balance 8-10 tokris on each side of the bike and drive slowly,” says Prakash Kudu, whose first jamun trees were an inheritance from his uncle. The summer heat is relentless, which makes jamuns mushy quickly, and more likely to burst during the ride. “We also don’t water the trees too much once they start flowering to prevent the fruits from bloating becoming more susceptible to damage,” he says.
Part of the GI tag effort was also to urge farmers to raise funding requests for storage and transportation. “We experimented with packaging and design. The blueprint of the corrugated boxes inscribed with the GI certification is ready,” Patil says. This would extend shelf life by about a week and enable them to travel farther and garner a greater consumer base. Farmers, however, have been slow to respond to even encouragements to apply for subsidised fertilisers and bamboo through the Gath.
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Harvest is a hand-picked, laborious process. The jamun’s branches are sprawling and delicate, hollow on the inside and unable to bear the weight of climbing farmers. “We erect bamboo structures around the trees and pick fruits on alternate days,” say Prabhakar and Kudu. Farmers also tie sarees to poles, creating a hammock-like structure where jamuns rain down and are collected into the soft fabric.
Climate change is increasingly unsettling Bahadoli’s fruit economy in other ways. It has disrupted the fruit’s tightly timed season and, in turn, the prices it commands. Erratic rainfall and shifting weather patterns are delaying flowering and fruiting, pushing the harvest deeper into the monsoon. “Trees that would start typically flowering by late March and ripen by May are now burgeoning with fruit as late as July,” says Prabhakar. The monsoon births conditions that jamuns are particularly vulnerable to, causing the fruit to split, rot, and fall prematurely, say farmers.
The jamun’s branches are sprawling and delicate, hollow on the inside and unable to bear the weight of climbing farmers.
In recent years, especially post 2020, such shifts have led to significant crop losses. “Jamuns may get infested with worms and bacteria during wet weather. Customers are hungry for jamuns, but wary too. The fields are littered with fallen fruit and we are forced to sell a kilo for Rs. 500–Rs. 800.” As a result, even though Bahadoli jamuns are valued in the market, farmers’ incomes have become far more unpredictable.
Bahadoli’s crisis is not one of state neglect, but of stalled collectivisation. Even as climate change disrupts fruiting cycles, and jamuns and associated products command a premium in urban markets but lead to uneven gains across the value chain, the institutional mechanisms meant to buffer these shocks remain underused. The GI tag has been secured, but without capital, coordination, or trust, its benefits remain largely symbolic.
“We have asked for a cold storage and processing unit where we can box our produce in air-conditioned hygienic environments,” says Kini. The challenge is now to continue to raise awareness about the value and promise of these jamuns beyond Bahadoli's Mumbai market that has already been tapped into. The infrastructure to adapt remains out of reach without co-ordinated investment.
To face these challenges, it is imperative that farmers band together, with each other, and with those trying to aid their effort. “The next generation will continue farming because it fetches a lot of profit in one go,” say Kini and Prabhakar. For the Bahadoli jamun to endure a changing climate, new knowledge systems must work alongside traditional practices. Otherwise, a legacy built over generations risks being lost just as it begins to show new promise.
Cover Art by Sharath Ravishankar
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Editor’s note: To know Rama Ranee is to learn about the power of regenerative practices. The yoga therapist, author and biodynamic farmer spent three decades restoring land in Karnataka, envisioning it as a forest farm in harmony with nature. In ‘The Anemane Dispatch’, a monthly column, she shares tales from the fields, reflections on the realities of farming in an unusual terrain, and stories about local ecology gathered through observation, bird watching—and being.
Until half a century ago, this could be said with some certainty: farmers in India grew what they ate. Their choice of crops was determined by their dietary habits, which were in turn shaped by the flora supported by the local climate and other conditions, such as soil, water and access to seeds. In Karnataka, in and around our village Kasaraguppe, commonly grown produce included hardy vegetables and drought-resistant varieties of millets, pulses, groundnut and other oilseeds. Consider, for example, the typical breakfast of ragi rotti served with a nutty chutney made of Niger seeds—a simple meal that kept farmers full in the early morning as they worked in the fields.
They indicated how communities optimised the fruits of the land, and, as some of the elders in Kasaraguppe admit, led a life of fulfillment.
Here, traditional integrated farming systems took into account crops, livestock, poultry and agroforestry. These systems built resilience against changes in weather, like droughts, by reducing and recycling waste, sustaining soil fertility, and managing water. They were sustainable and circular, offering farmers a level of self-sufficiency. Indigenous diets and cuisines in the region reflected this agricultural skill and culinary acumen. They indicated how communities optimised the fruits of the land, and, as some of the elders in Kasaraguppe admit, led a life of fulfillment.
Then came the Green Revolution, which transformed agriculture with its four-pronged strategy of chemical fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides, hybridised, high-yielding variety (HYV) seeds, and irrigation. By the 1970s, the production of rice and wheat in India increased manifold within a short span of time, achieving food security to feed a burgeoning population, and reducing the risk of famine and hunger. The greater availability of staples like rice and wheat impacted indigenous dietary habits.
Conversations with farmers in Kasaraguppe and the Bannerghatta area reveal how the transition from a varied diet to a more homogenous one—consistent with the conversion to chemical input-based agriculture—occurred. While access to the Public Distribution System (PDS) ensured a steady supply of food for families, it further sped up the shift to a more rice- and wheat-based diet, rich in carbohydrates. The integrated, multi-cropping systems and millet-based diets, suited to the region, have declined considerably. Some direct consequences include declining agrobiodiversity and a rise in health issues such as cardiometabolic diseases due to nutritional imbalance.
A considerable proportion of Karnataka’s land area, nearly 77%, is arid or semi-arid. The Eastern Dry Zone of the state, including the Kolar and Bengaluru districts, and the North Western Zone of Tamil Nadu, including the Krishnagiri and Dharmapuri districts adjoining south Bengaluru, are classified as drylands. These areas are characterised by red soil, red loam or lateritic soil in pockets, and high variability in rainfall. The Eastern dry zone has an annual average of 680 to 890 mm of rain, and the North Western Zone of Tamil Nadu an annual average of 811 mm.
In these drought-prone drylands, farms are typically small and marginal, less than two acres in size, rain-fed, without any perennial water sources like rivers. Largely, they were managed as subsistence agriculture. After providing for the family, the excess of crops like ragi, sorghum, and maize were sold locally for cash to purchase other food items and meet living expenses.
In these circumstances, nothing is wasted—not even the water in which pulses such as Bengal gram are cooked.
Terracotta storage bins and stone-and-mortar granaries were a part of the farm architecture, built into living spaces. Some were large enough to hold four years’ worth of grain, ensuring kitchen fires remained lit through drought years or other contingencies.
In these circumstances, nothing is wasted—not even the water in which pulses such as Bengal gram are cooked, which is the base for ‘Uppu-saaru’. This thin soup-like dish, made of pulse stock, is spiced with black pepper, garlic and chili.
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The cultivation of sweet pumpkins and bottle gourds directly on compost heaps was once a common sight. Ridge gourds, on the other hand, were grown on the borders of fields along the hedges, and snake and bitter gourds in the gardens attached to homes. Wild edibles like tubers, berries, greens, and mushrooms added variety and nutritional value to regular fare.
There was one main cropping cycle in a year: the Southwest monsoon season, called Mungaru or Mungari. The lunar calendar was a useful tool, indicating potential rainy days which coincided with specific stellar constellations. Each of these was conducive for certain crops. Preparation of the land and ploughing began in the middle or end of April, after the Ashvini showers. Sowing or transplanting ended in September. Between December and January, the grains were harvested, threshed, winnowed, and stored.
With Bharani in late April, the planting season began with Yellu (sesame), intercropped with a larger variety of Doddatagari (pigeon pea), also called Totada tagari. In late May, after the Rohini showers, Muskina Jola (maize) and Billi Jola (sorghum) were sown. Paddy sowing required regular showers, starting with the onset of monsoon in June, in the constellation of Mrigashira. A hardy dryland variety Doddabairnellu was the natural choice. This was the ideal time for sowing groundnut and raising seedlings of brinjals and chili, too.
The planting season in and around Kasaraguppe peaked between June and early August, showcasing the diversity of produce once cultivated. Castor, an important oilseed, Avare (hyacinth bean) and ragi were sown in mid-August during the Magha rains. By late August, towards the end of the south-west monsoon in Purva Phalguni, Hurli (legumes), Hesaru (green gram), and Uddu (black gram) were sown.
Ragi mudde, or steam-cooked ragi flour shaped into balls, with saaru, a spiced soup-like dish made with lentils—usually pigeon pea or green gram, with or without vegetables—or uppu-saaru constituted the mid-day meal or lunch.
Other lunch options included bas-saaru—an extract of greens and lentils cooked with spices—rice and palya, a dry vegetable side dish. Recently, I sampled a traditional palya courtesy of one of the villagers. It was made of raw jackfruit, whole hyacinth bean, Bengal gram and horse gram, cooked together with a tempering of mustard seeds, onion, chili, a little garlic, and curry leaves—dense, flavourful, and surprisingly easy on the gut.
Usually, one of the women of the family carried the lunch meal to the fields. At night, ragi mudde were served again with saaru. But finger millet wasn’t the only staple; others like foxtail millet or little millet were major components of the diet, served like rice.
Alongside millets, pulses were the essentials of local cuisine, supplemented by dairy, meat, vegetables and greens—cultivated and wild, native, and therefore adapted to the region, its soil and climate. The cuisine was a combination of complex carbohydrates (gluten-free choices, with low-glycemic index), high in fibre, rich in minerals like iron and magnesium, vitamins like B12, and protein, micro-nutrients, as well as antioxidants.
The cuisine was a combination of complex carbohydrates (gluten-free choices, with low-glycemic index), high in fibre, rich in minerals like iron and magnesium, vitamins like B12, and protein.
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Usuli or steamed whole pulses, either horse gram, black-eyed peas or green gram, was a protein-rich snack washed down with buttermilk. Black gram was one of the main ingredients in Dose, and the only one in Vade, other than salt and chilies. Vade is a popular snack to this day, but what made the old variant so distinct was the oil used for frying: Niger oil or Hucchellenne, which served most of their needs. All edible oils were extracted in a cold press called ghana, or wooden press—a slow-turning pestle operated by oxen. This ensured that the oil retained most of the seed’s nutritional elements.
All edible oils were extracted in a cold press called ghana, or wooden press—a slow-turning pestle operated by oxen.
Unde or laddoos for children were prepared from either foxtail millet, little millet, or sesame, dry roasted till the grains popped, with a sprinkling of roasted groundnuts and fried gram, sweetened with jaggery syrup.
Livestock, chiefly cows, sheep, and goats, were integrated into the system. Most households in our village reared cows of the indigenous Hallikar breed, whose milk was valued for its flavour and nutritional benefits. Today we know that it contains the A2 beta-casein protein, is rich in omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins A, D, E, K, and is excellent for gut health and immunity.
Meat, chiefly chicken, was consumed once a week or on special occasions, especially when guests were entertained. Though there were coops to protect them from mongoose and other predators, chicken ranged freely in the home yard during the day, scouring the ground for insects and seeds—an effective pest control measure that could keep termites and even smaller snakes in check.
Indigenous food sources are said to be better suited to meet the nutritional needs of local populations due to higher nutrient density, higher-quality protein, and nutrients which are more easily absorbable by the body, like minerals. The antioxidant, anti-inflammatory properties of wild greens and tubers were immensely valuable as complementary sources of nutrition. Manual processing, such as the case of Niger oil using wooden presses, and simple cooking methods ensured the nutrients in produce were preserved. All foods grown by the farmer were, by default, organic and natural without the risk of chemical contamination. Whatever was healthy for the farmer and the farm and its animals, was healthy for the planet too!
The small farmer for whom minor millets (kodo and little millet) were staples, now finds them out of reach.
Today, organic food is available at a premium on store shelves. Millets are processed and packaged as high-value health food items. Their consumption is mainly in urban areas, driven by health concerns. The small farmer for whom minor millets (kodo and little millet) were staples, now finds them out of reach. He can neither afford to grow them without incurring losses, nor afford to buy them regularly, limiting their use to festivals and special occasions. Tragically, their cultivation and consumption by farming communities has declined.
In Karnataka, 80% of total farm holdings belong to small and marginal farmers. This group is adversely affected by the shift towards a market-driven economy, making survival a battle. The growth of cities, often unregulated, has increased the pressure on agriculture in the rural outskirts. The demand on land for non-agricultural purposes; escalation in input costs and labour; the perception that farming is an unattractive profession among younger, especially educated members of families; the aspiration for alternate livelihoods without access to appropriate skillsets and training; the fragmentation of communities and loss of their knowledge bases is making traditional subsistence farming unviable. The promotion of monocropping systems and mechanised, resource-intensive agriculture is further displacing small farmers.
Concerns surrounding subsistence farming, therefore, must be addressed because it is deeply connected to the social fabric and cultural life of communities. It has been the substratum upon which agriculture has sustained. The integrated system of farming which was the backbone of sustainable agriculture and stable, healthy communities, must be protected, or re-invented, and given a new lease of life. In these times of climate change and declining agrobiodiversity, it might provide viable solutions for food security.
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Cover Art by Khyati K
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An ordinary day in the life of a buffalo is organised around adapting to heat, getting enough rest, and following a routine. In much of India, that routine begins with a slow walk to water, a pause under a tree, and long hours of chewing cud in the shade. These are not quaint images of rural life—they are clues to what buffaloes need to stay healthy. The domesticated water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) is an animal whose welfare closely depends on how well its environment mirrors these basic rhythms.
Across India, most buffaloes are raised in smallholder systems, where housing is simple but often well-adapted. Buffaloes are housed in semi-open sheds with thatched or tin roofs, which typically have mud flooring and a water source nearby. During peak summer, farmers hose down animals or lead them to village ponds, canals and backwaters where they cool off after grazing. In Southeast Asia, swamp buffaloes spend hours partially submerged in flooded rice fields, naturally regulating body temperature.
The challenges become visible in peri-urban (transitional areas on the peripheries of cities, carrying both urban and rural characteristics) dairies, where space constraints often lead to enclosed sheds with poor ventilation and little to no access to water bodies. Most farmers rely on hosing them down once or twice a day. In urban dairies, even this can be inconsistent. Without ponds or adequate cooling systems, buffaloes often stand through peak heat, panting or crowding into small shaded patches.
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In rural India, buffaloes are typically raised in extensive or semi-intensive systems. Both are livestock management practices—the former relies on grazing across large open pastures, while the latter refers to a hybrid method balancing intensive care and some confinement with free-roaming. Buffaloes graze during the day and return to basic shelters at night. These systems are low-cost, low-input and flexible, allowing animals to forage and move freely.
These systems are low-cost, low-input and flexible, allowing animals to forage and move freely.
As dairying moves closer to cities, this model shifts. In peri-urban belts (like in New Delhi NCR's Gurugram-Ghaziabad region), buffaloes are often stall-fed and tethered within small plots. Green fodder is brought in from wholesale markets, and animals are fed a mix of crop residues, oil cakes, and commercial feed. Space is tighter, and sheds are frequently built with concrete flooring to simplify cleaning and waste management.
In dense urban areas like in New Delhi and the older gaothans [older, central parts of the city] of Mumbai and Pune, the constraints are even sharper. In older city dairies, buffaloes may spend most of their lives indoors. They are tied in rows, sometimes with just enough room to lie down and stand up. Ventilation can be poor, especially in low-roofed sheds hemmed in by surrounding buildings. Waste disposal becomes a daily logistical challenge, with dung and wastewater needing to be manually cleared or channelled into drains.
Studies underline this trade-off. Research on buffalo calves in Maharashtra comparing barn housing with loose, open systems found that animals in loose housing showed lower stress markers—reduced heart rates and cortisol levels—and spent more time ruminating and interacting socially. They also drank more water and displayed more natural behaviours, suggesting greater comfort. Barn-housed calves, by contrast, showed signs of physiological strain despite similar growth rates.
Studies comparing barn housing with loose, open systems found that animals in loose housing showed lower stress markers—reduced heart rates and cortisol levels.
Flooring and enclosure design play an equally important role. Mud floors, common in villages, are softer and easier on the hooves. However, while rural housing allows movement, it often struggles with hygiene. Field studies show that poor drainage and damp flooring are common, which can harbour pathogens and increase disease risk. Concrete floors, widely used in peri-urban dairies, improve hygiene but can cause discomfort when animals stand for long periods.
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Across all these systems—rural, peri-urban, and urban—the link between welfare and livelihood is direct. A buffalo that can cool itself, lie comfortably, and move enough to maintain health will eat better, produce more milk, and reproduce more reliably. One that stands in heat, on hard floors, in cramped conditions, will do the opposite.
What emerges is not a singular ideal of a housing system, but a set of principles. Dry, well-drained floors reduce disease. Shade and airflow reduce heat stress. Access to water enables cooling. More space allows movement and rest.
Many of these improvements are not capital-intensive. A shaded extension, better drainage, periodic washing, or even a small open yard can shift outcomes significantly. In cities, where land is scarce, such changes require planning. Studies from rural India reflect the other end of this spectrum: animals roam freely for grazing but receive minimal structured feeding or veterinary care. Nearly all depend on natural pastures and crop residues, with limited supplementation or healthcare access. Here, the challenge is not confinement but lack of support systems including fodder cultivation, vaccination, and breeding services.
Small efforts like adding a shaded extension, ensuring better drainage, and even a small open yard can shift outcomes significantly.
To watch a buffalo resting in its shed is to glimpse the outcome of everyday decisions—about space, water, flooring, and care—which in turn impacts the livelihoods of those who tend to these animals.
Also read: Mumbai’s Nagori dairies are a living archive of milk, migration—and memory
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Editor's Note: The planet we inherited as children is not the planet we will someday bid goodbye to. The orchestral call of cicadas in the evenings, the coinciding arrival of the monsoon with the start of the school year, and the predictability of natural cycles—things we thought to be unchanging are now at risk. An altered climate, declining biodiversity and warming oceans aren’t distant realities presented in news headlines; they affect us all in seen and unseen ways. In ‘Converging Currents’, marine conservationist and science communicator Phalguni Ranjan explores how the fine threads connecting people and nature are transforming with a changing planet.
In many parts of India, the butterfly pea plant (or aparajita) has long been an unassuming presence. It climbs along fences, edges along kitchen gardens, and blooms quietly; mostly blue, but sometimes white. For generations, it was not cultivated so much as it was lived with: plucked occasionally for rituals, brewed into home remedies, or simply left to weave into the local ecology.
Today, that same flower grows in an altered landscape. The butterfly pea plant has been brought under a spotlight—one shaped by global demand, wellness markets, and supply chains.
Believed to be native to parts of Africa and equatorial South and Southeast Asia, the butterfly pea is now widespread, notably cultivated in South America and even Australia.
Also called ‘blue pea’, the flower has been used in traditional medicine across cultures for centuries, where it has been associated with several health benefits. Today, the same benefits have made it attractive to the rapidly growing herbal tea market. Once largely confined to traditional uses, it is now being positioned as a caffeine-free, functional beverage, marketed globally.
Valued at $331 million in 2025, it is projected to touch $986 million by 2034, with India, Thailand, and Indonesia leading in its growth.
The vivid blue pigment of the Clitoria ternatea comes from bioactive chemical compounds (phytochemicals) called anthocyanins: pigments that appear blue, red, or purple depending on the pH, and have been found to have pharmacological properties. At a time when global food systems are under pressure to move away from synthetic towards natural, such plant-derived colours are gaining commercial appeal in the preparation of a wide variety of foods and confectionary. There’s also the added layer of visual appeal to the butterfly petals, when brewed into a tea: the vivid blue turns purple when a few drops of lemon are added to it, making it attractive in desserts and cocktails.
The global demand for butterfly pea, as a tea ingredient and source of natural dye for food, is increasing. Valued at $331 million in 2025, it is projected to touch $986 million by 2034, with India, Thailand, and Indonesia leading in its growth.
Butterfly pea tea’s multifaceted appeal has transformed a simple plant into an ‘attractive’ commodity. But this story isn’t new: we’re all familiar with calming chamomile, invigorating hibiscus, digestive peppermint, and immunity-boosting turmeric. The surge in herbal teas is part of a broader global shift in consumer behaviour. Across markets, there is increasing demand for products perceived as natural, with health benefits that justify their consumption. Their fresh aroma and flavour profiles and tags like ‘caffeine-free’, ‘antioxidant-rich’, and ‘metabolism-boosting’–all sell very well to a health-conscious customer base that is seeking alternatives to caffeine- and sugar-rich beverages. What is also playing a part, albeit in smaller ways, is the social-media-worthy vibrance of this tea.
Also read: In an age of food abundance, why does ‘hidden hunger’ hold India back?
Butterfly pea extracts and parts of the plant have been used in traditional medicine systems like Ayurveda for their antidiabetic, antimicrobial, antipyretic, analgesic, anti-inflammatory, antidepressant, and neurological benefits. A paste of the flowers is used to treat skin ailments in Thai and Indonesian traditional medicine. In Cuba, a decoction of the roots is used to manage menstrual health and irregularities.
Their fresh aroma and flavour profiles and tags like ‘caffeine-free’, ‘antioxidant-rich’, and ‘metabolism-boosting’–all sell very well to a health-conscious customer base that is seeking alternatives to caffeine
Studies have found that the anthocyanins in butterfly pea extract can help improve liver health, manage blood glucose levels, enhance insulin levels, reduce inflammation, improve cardiac health, and help manage cholesterol and weight. Data from other studies suggest that the flower’s extract may support overall metabolism, fight oxidative stress, and help maintain a healthy gut. However, it is worth noting that most studies were conducted on mice, with relatively few human observations.
The plant, due to its colour-changing anthocyanins, is commonly used as a source of natural and safer colouring for cosmetics and a variety of foods globally, from beverages, desserts, candies, to rice and dumplings. The flowers are also eaten or used in beverages in some regions.
The plant also finds use as a natural insecticide and fodder. Because of its nitrogen-fixing abilities in agriculture, it is used as a cover crop and green manure. On the other hand, the pH-sensitive pigments are used in chemical reactions to indicate endpoints.
Any substance can be harmful in high doses, while even toxins can be therapeutic in tiny amounts.
As with most foods, the effects of a plant’s phytocompounds depend on the concentration and dosage. For butterfly pea, specifically, the same beneficial compounds can have adverse effects at high concentrations, and experiments link heavy consumption to impaired liver and kidney function. This is true for other herbal teas as well where overdoses can cause complications.
Traditional therapy used to determine consumption in guideline-mandated, titrated and controlled concentrations. Now, flavour, colour, aroma, and trends drive unmeasured recreational consumption. Herbal teas, including blue pea tea, have gone from being ‘medicines’ to ‘drinks’. Interestingly, a significant boost in home-based herbal remedies including teas and an increased reliance on traditional medicine came after the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is worth remembering that “herbal” does not mean “safe”. Some herbal teas have been found to carry heavy metal contaminants and pathogens, and many can cause gastrointestinal, hepatic, hematologic, and nervous system complications, with a very small number of fatalities also reported.
Unfortunately, literature on these toxic aspects is severely limited, as is the information or disclaimers provided by brands marketing these teas.
Also read: What's lurking in our food?
The shift from local use to global demand changes more than just markets and income; it changes relationships with the plant itself. Traditionally, the butterfly pea functioned as a multi-purpose species. But with growing demand, it is now being redefined through the lens of yield and money. In this sense, the plant becomes a functional ingredient, and its value is measured by the quality of its powders, parts, and extracts. Reports suggest the Indian butterfly pea market has been developing since 2018, with the establishment of domestic companies.
Studies find that cultivating and harvesting medicinal plants, in general, can improve rural earnings. Indeed, increased income through harvesting and selling dried butterfly pea flowers has been empowering for women in parts of India. Even farmers who failed to turn profits with traditional crops have shifted to profitably growing these plants.
However, one general challenge persists: practices that once regulated the use of many medicinal plants, to allow regeneration and replenishment, are replaced by incentives to extract more, and faster. The concept of sustainability here is quite hollow.
As demand grows, harvesting intensifies, often leading to over-extraction, declining resource bases, and pressure on ecosystems that were once sustainably used. Add to this climate change-induced pressures like extreme weather events and high temperatures, and the high possibility of monocultures taking over, and we have a standard framework of the problems agriculture faces today.
Markets for such products are unstable, often fad-driven, determined by visual novelty and perceived health benefits.
At the same time, the benefits of trade rarely flow evenly. Markets for such products are unstable, often fad-driven, determined by visual novelty and perceived health benefits. Small producers lack capital, market access, or bargaining power, and are eventually outcompeted by bigger actors, while traders capture profits and determine sourcing across regions. Many of these medicinal plants, often originally non-timber forest products (NTFP) and once a shared safety net, can become overharvested, privatised in cultivation, and thus, less accessible to the local communities that have coexisted with them for centuries.
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Across the world, plants (and practices) are constantly being rediscovered, repackaged, and redistributed.
Some may call it misappropriation, biopiracy, and exploitation.
Take the example of rooibos (Aspalathus linearis), a shrub native to South Africa, long used indigenously to make an herbal infusion. As global demand grew, rooibos faced intellectual property disputes, including attempts by U.S.-based Burke International, and then by France, to trademark its name and control its commercial use. Eventually, pushback defeated these attempts, with rooibos receiving a GI tag in 2014.
Controversial attempts by U.S.-based entities to patent or claim intellectual property rights over basmati rice varieties, turmeric, and neem remain significant examples of the misappropriation of traditional knowledge.
It is worth remembering that “herbal” does not mean “safe”.
After successful pushback, India also created the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) to document existing practices and prevent future inappropriate patenting. Many attempts were blocked or revoked, but the attempts continue. The TKDL lists 375 such attempts from across the world since 2009 which have been amended or rejected, and most of these are from the UK and US.
Who owns biodiversity, and who gets to decide that? And why?
The butterfly pea is currently still in transition, and it may or may not face a similar fate. At the end of the day, its story is about more than just the alchemical magic of a medicinal tea changing from blue to purple.
It is about exploitative systems, and the ecological and ethical impacts thereof.
It is about how a living plant, once part of a landscape, becomes part of a commodity market.
And whether, in that process, it can remain rooted in its ecosystem, local knowledge, and remain accessible to the very people it came from, even as others attempt to claim and profit off its identity.
Cover art by Pratik Bhide
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A mild fever. Constipation. The fever increases by a degree. Diarrhoea. The fever plateaus. A profound fatigue. The fever rises again. A headache, as severe as ever. The fever plateaus again.
Probably a viral infection, right? Maybe, maybe not. That’s the problem with typhoid. It’s so commonplace, so unassuming in the way it presents that you’d hardly suspect it means trouble.
Typhoid has had a lot of practice hoodwinking us. It has accompanied humanity through most of its evolution—from the time we migrated out of Africa, to be precise. For years, we mistook it to be the same as typhus (typhoid literally translates to typhus-like). In the 1860s, it was confirmed that typhoid only spreads when we consume food or water contaminated by the bacteria that causes it, usually a result of sewage water contaminating drinking water supplies. Only in the 1880s, over a decade after the germ theory (the theory that microorganisms cause diseases) was widely accepted, was the offending organism isolated: Salmonella typhi.
This spurred the invention of diagnostic tools like the Widal test and even a vaccine over the next decade and a half, but nothing that could effectively fight the disease. The bacteria continued to weaken hosts through month-long fevers, and kill 10–20% of those it infected. The discovery of chloramphenicol in 1947 changed that. The antibiotic drastically reduced the duration of the fever and brought down the mortality rate to under 1%. It was nothing short of miraculous. The failure of this miracle is staring us in the face today.
Typhoid has had a lot of practice hoodwinking us. It has accompanied humanity through most of its evolution.
Typhoid continues to be endemic to (consistently present in) over 75 countries across Asia, Africa, and Oceania, contributing to around 9.3 million cases annually, and 107,500 deaths. India, shockingly, accounts for 58% of the world's typhoid burden, distantly followed by Pakistan (8%) and Bangladesh (5%). Data also suggests that children below 15 years of age make up the lion’s share of India’s typhoid burden. The frightening truth? Almost 70% of these cases have stopped responding to the safest, most accessible antibiotics prescribed. A crisis is reaching its boiling point across these countries, but especially in India—and we may miss our window to act.
Also read: How drug-resistant tuberculosis is bringing life to a halt in India
There is a textbook definition of how typhoid presents in patients: a step ladder fever, a slightly enlarged liver, plaque on the molar teeth, and rose spots (pink lesions on the chest and abdomen). Dr. Jacob John, a PhD in Infectious Disease Epidemiology who co-authored a 2026 Lancet paper on India’s typhoid burden, says that only about 30% of India’s current cases present with these classical symptoms. Doctors now report seeing patients with cough, or chills—symptoms that they have not been trained to associate with typhoid. “Fever is the only consistent symptom,” says Dr. John. “So, anything that can be dengue, can be typhoid.”
Even if a doctor suspects typhoid, confirming it via diagnostics is no easy task. A diagnostic test can take one of two routes: detect the pathogen (the Salmonella bacteria) or the antibody (our body’s disease-specific defense).
Antibody tests only work well in countries where the typhoid burden is low; in ours, it might return false positives, i.e. wrongly diagnose patients with typhoid. This happens because repeated exposure to unsanitary water (and thus, traces of the typhoid bacteria) results in low levels of antibodies in the general population. Though this drawback is well-known, antibody tests are still used as a preliminary test because they give speedy results, and can be paired with a basic blood test (CBC) to diagnose typhoid, shares internist Dr. Rakesh Saigaonkar.
Another way to ensure that someone doesn’t get wrongly diagnosed is to make the cut-off for antibody concentration higher. “If a patient’s antibody count is more than 1:160, then we consider that they have typhoid. Or else we check their antibody count again after 3 days, and if the count has increased, they are more likely to have typhoid,” says Dr. Saigaonkar.
Even if a doctor suspects typhoid, confirming it via diagnostics is no easy task.
Pathogen-based tests require the bacteria to be present in large quantities in the bloodstream for the test to pick up on it. One such test, the blood culture is the reference or gold standard for typhoid testing, especially since it can also test for antibiotic resistant strains. That said, it is rarely, if ever, used in typhoid detection outside of scientific studies because of the sheer time taken for results, the price involved, and that the test correctly identifies only 60% of the cases that come its way.
Diagnostic realities reveal worrying patterns. Firstly, any statistics we have on typhoid are likely underestimating the typhoid burden. The bacteria also has a tendency to persist in 1-6% of recovered patients, making them chronic asymptomatic carriers. Secondly, the variable symptoms and the lack of a point-of-care diagnostic test make both diagnosis and—as a result—treatment shots in the dark for doctors.
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Typhoid is sticky, devious, and skilled at stationing itself in your intestines. By impacting your capacity to digest food, it weakens your access to the energy needed to fight it. If you are unvaccinated, your body does not even have prior experience recognising or fighting this bacteria, and is on the back foot. Antibiotics are the only medicines that can step in at this point and fight the battle for you. Given how stubbornly the bacteria occupies the body, antibiotics have to be prescribed for a minimum of 14 days, and, if severe, for up to 6 weeks. The last thing you want is for the medicine to not work and instead make the bacteria stronger.
By the 1990s, none of the first-line drugs were any good, and a second line of defence evolved.
But, in what Dr. John describes as a “cat and mouse game,” that is exactly what has happened. Shortly after chloramphenicols were introduced for typhoid treatment, two other classes of antibiotics were also found to be effective: cotrimoxazole, and penicillin derivatives like ampicillin and amoxicillin. Together, these 3 form the first-line drugs, or the first set of antibiotics prescribed to help the body fight typhoid.
It took only about two decades of antibiotic use before the earliest case of drug-resistant typhoid was reported in Mexico. By the 1990s, none of the first-line drugs were any good, and a second line of defence evolved: fluoroquinolones and third-generation cephalosporins. Fluoroquinolones were widely prescribed since they were cheaper and faster than the first-line drugs, and reduced chances of relapse. Unfortunately, this has meant a steady increase in fluoroquinolone resistance (FQR), which accounted for 94% of the total number of cases in 2017. Although this is worrying, the number of cases, both overall and drug-resistant ones, have fallen in the past 6 years. These antibiotics are being prescribed with far more caution now, which have most likely cut down the cases, but it is still early to tell.
By 2024, only 63% of India’s typhoid strains were fluoroquinolone-resistant, but still accounted for 82% of the hospitalisations associated with the disease. Moreover, only 3% of cases are unresponsive to cephalosporins, and an additional 3% are resistant to azithromycin, but no strain (so far) is resistant to both.
Currently, antibiotics are administered intravenously only for patients with severe typhoid. Growing drug-resistance in typhoid is forcing doctors to resort to stronger antibiotics like carbapenems, which can only be given intravenously. A shift towards IV antibiotics threatens to strain an already overburdened health system and the patient’s finances. A modelling study from 2023 suggests that 91% of typhoid-related expenses in India are borne by patients, and only 9% by the government. These costs spike when hospitalisation and fluoroquinolone resistance are involved. Some studies also associate IV antibiotics with higher mortality due to the risk of infection.
The data so far suggests a loose hierarchy to antibiotic resistant typhoid: first-line drugs first, then second-line drugs, and then azithromycin and carbapenems as the last line of defence. In reality, the drug-resistance patterns are far more messy and unpredictable. There are cases where fluoroquinolones and azithromycin are both powerless but the old first-line drug ampicillin works. There are cases where fluoroquinolones and ampicillin don’t work but chloramphenicol works. What is really happening here?
Dr. John cites the plasmid theory as a possible explanation. Essentially, bacteria store DNA in two suitcases (of sorts)—a big one for chromosomal DNA, which is essential for the bacteria to reproduce, and a small one with some non-essential but nice-to-have DNA. This small suitcase is called the plasmid. Genes related to antibiotic resistance are usually stored here since they provide a competitive edge to the bacteria but are not indispensable. Thankfully for us, plasmids have a luggage limit; they cannot carry the genes for ampicillin-resistance and cephalosporin-resistance and azithromycin-resistance all together. Over a period of time, they have to choose which genes to keep, and which to discard. If ampicillin is not used for a long time, the bacteria has no practical reason to store genes that evade the drug.
This sounds exciting, because it suggests that typhoid’s drug resistance is cyclical. But there are two caveats to this cyclicity: first, even if the antibiotic is not used to treat typhoid, but to treat other illnesses, drug-resistance will continue to develop. Secondly, antibiotics like chloramphenicol were abandoned because they had negative side-effects. Though it occasionally works again now, it is not a preferred antibiotic for treatment.
What is the right way to fight typhoid then? The complexities of diagnosing and treating typhoid make the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics unavoidable. With the time it takes to detect antibiotic resistance through laboratories, doctors are forced to make decisions empirically, often prescribing a combination of antibiotics to increase the chances of successful treatment. While it must be stressed that patients finish their antibiotic courses, prescription itself cannot be streamlined until more precise diagnostic tools are invented.
In reality, the drug-resistance patterns are far more messy and unpredictable.
Government guidelines are constantly observing and adjusting to national patterns in drug-resistance. The Indian government’s July 2025 guidelines exclude fluoroquinolones and recommend third-generation cephalosporins and azithromycin as the primary drugs. The guidelines also reinstated one of the first-line drugs, cotrimoxazole, since S. typhi has become susceptible to it again. Aligning treatment practices with these guidelines is an important first step in controlling drug-resistance.
Also read: Recycled water helps meet India’s cleaning needs. But can it quench our thirst?
At an individual level, small traces of antibiotics (like those left in your body when you don’t finish the prescribed antibiotic course) teach bacteria to evolve to survive the antibiotic. Your gut bacteria are among these, and through a process called horizontal gene transfer, they can pass on this genetic information to pathogens, enabling the bacteria to develop resistance after entering your body.
These individual cases add up, and the S. typhi evolves. It becomes a matter of survival for the bacteria to learn to fight, say, azithromycin, and the strain of bacteria that can fight azithromycin survives. And thus, (for the sake of this example) azithromycin-resistant typhoid becomes the predominant strain of typhoid. This means that even if a small child who has never had antibiotics before happens to eat the wrong paani puri, they will ingest an antibiotic-resistant strain of typhoid and the medicine they are given will not work.
There are two ways to work around this, both involving prevention rather than cure. First: teach your body to fight. Vaccination teaches your body to identify and defeat the typhoid bacteria without depending on an antibiotic. Not depending on antibiotics is useful for many reasons, including that antibiotic discovery is difficult, underfunded and time-consuming, and that S. typhi will eventually develop resistance against any new antibiotic. Vaccines have the potential to immediately reduce case load, and build an internal self-defence system that functions regardless of whether a strain is resistant to antibiotics or not. Vaccines are especially important for typhoid because getting the illness does not provide patients with natural immunity for more than a year or two.
Until recently, typhoid vaccines offered only temporary and moderately effective protection. In 2018, the WHO approved the Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine (TCV) that is far more effective in only one dose. Though manufactured in India, the vaccine has not yet been introduced into India’s Universal Immunisation Programme despite the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation’s (NTAGI) recommendation to introduce it around 9–12 months of age. While this recommendation has not been formalised in the national immunisation schedule yet, the Indian Academy of Pediatrics recommends administering the TCV vaccine when a child is 6 months old. A Lancet study from 2026 also endorses catch-up vaccination campaigns for children under 15, since that is the age group with the highest typhoid burden in India. The vaccine is available in most private clinics for Rs. 2,000-2,500.
This means that even if a small child who has never had antibiotics before happens to eat the wrong paani puri, they will ingest an antibiotic-resistant strain of typhoid and the medicine they are given will not work.
Second: fix sanitation and sewage disposal. Typhoid is not just a waterborne disease. It spreads only from faecal-oral routes, meaning that it only leaves the body as faeces and only enters the body through the mouth. “If you can ensure no contamination occurs, it is guaranteed that typhoid will disappear,” says Dr. John. “But it is not an easy thing to do because we have unplanned cities. Where do you put your sewage? Under the road in front of your house. Where is your water line flowing? Under the same road.” The architecture of the sewage system—poorly planned, with sewage pipes laid close to clean pipes—must be addressed. Even a single typhoid case is a failure in sanitation, but being the country with the largest typhoid burden is an indictment of India’s water supply infrastructure. Sanitation workers, especially those involved in cleaning toilets, manholes, or septic tanks are especially at risk of coming in contact with faecal pathogens.
Even a single typhoid case is a failure in sanitation, but being the country with the largest typhoid burden is an indictment of India’s water supply infrastructure.
Sanitary reforms have been directly linked to the reduction in typhoid cases in Oxford in the late 1800s. The reason that vaccination is championed as a more urgent solution in landmark studies on typhoid is that we believe that our poorly planned cities cannot change. It raises a question: should our solutions be restricted to the realities of the world we occupy, or should they carry the radical belief of what we could become?
Edited by Anushka Mukherjee and Neerja Deodhar
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In south Cherthala, a panchayat in Kerala’s Alappuzha district, ‘Thaickal’ is more than just the name of a village. It is inextricably tied to the very identity of the village’s most popular crop—the amaranth, or ‘cheera’ as it is known in Malayalam. Its famed red variety, unique to Thaickal, where it has been grown for at least a century, has been a sure source of sustenance for many women farmers. Cultivated for six months of the year in this coastal village, the Thaickal cheera paints the landscape in a pleasing shade of red.
Amaranth (Amaranthus tricolor L.), grown in red and green varieties, is widely consumed across the state. Its leaves are chopped and thrown into a mix of hot coconut oil with minimal spices, transforming them into a delicious stir fry within minutes. Its taste and short cooking duration have made it a staple in Malayali meals. While research suggests that it is the most commonly grown leafy vegetable in Kerala (as of 2021, 2169 hectares were under amaranthus cultivation), the variety from Thaickal has attained a distinct popularity.
Most farmers tending to the growing leaves are women. Few own the land that they work on.
The farmers here prefix it with the descriptor ‘silk’, to emphasise its bright appearance and beauty. Another standout quality is its generous leaf density, or the number of leaves per unit area, in comparison to other varieties such as the Vlathankara cheera, also widely available in the region. With the Thaickal variety, one varambu (raised bed) can yield at least 10-12 kg. Farmers who make harvests early in the season can earn Rs. 100 per kilo—a Rs. 20 advantage over those who only sell during the season’s peak.
In the farmlands dotting Thaickal, the red amaranth is in various stages of bloom. Most farmers tending to the growing leaves are women. Few own the land that they work on. This was true of 58-year-old P. Sathy and her daughter Nisha Mol until shortly before the Good Food Movement encountered them.
“When it comes to working on leased land, the owner will give it to us only for six months,” says Sathy, who has been growing the crop in Thaickal for 45 years. “Even if the amaranth is not ready for harvest, we are asked to pluck it out.” All that is now in the past. “I bought this plot with my income. The registration process was completed just last week,” says Sathy with a smile that rarely leaves her face. “I can stand tall with pride, on my own land. This became possible only because of my earnings from agriculture,” she adds. As she stands on the 40 cents of land that she has just purchased, she articulates a hope for the near future: to own a neighboring plot that may go up for sale soon.
Sathy lives with 40-year-old Nisha and her 101-year-old mother in a modest house adjoining the family’s farm. The harvest from these fields has also afforded Sathy the choice to send her granddaughter to “the big city of Kochi” to pursue a college education. “I feel a deep connection to amaranth—to every part of it,” she says.
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Thaickal and its amaranth have been present in Sathy’s life for as long as she can recall. Both her parents were farmers in the village. “When I was a child, I went to the fields with my mother and learnt the ways of farming from her,” she says. Nisha, too, followed the same path with a daily routine that mirrors her mother’s: the duo begin their day at 4 am, retiring from the fields in the late hours of the evening.
Cultivation is at its height during the first half of the year. Under steady climatic conditions, the crop is ready for harvest in exactly 26 to 28 days. Given Thaickal’s propensity for flooding, the seeds are cultivated on raised beds, constructed by workers hired for the purpose. Once the seeds are sown, leaves emerge each week, ready to head to the vegetable market on the 28th day.
The most time-consuming aspect of the everyday labour in amaranth farming is watering the crop—a task that must be undertaken twice a day.
The harvest has a guaranteed timeline, and this is why farmers like Sathy and Nisha consider the crop to be a fortune maker. “This morning, I sold amaranth from that section of my land for Rs. 1,200. The money from the sale is here, in my pocket,” Sathy says with a laugh. From the six months they invest in amaranth cultivation, the mother-daughter duo typically earns around Rs. 5 lakh.
The leafy vegetable thrives under bright sunlight. “It is able to resist diseases because of the heat,” Sathy says. “During the monsoon, on the other hand, there are high chances of pests attacking the leaves.” Late at night, she and Nisha step into the fields with a torch to spot leafhoppers and caterpillars lurking among the leaves and the soil, to manually remove them. But they’re unable to do this as often as they’d like to. “After doing the day’s work, when I see my bed, I fall asleep out of exhaustion,” says Sathy.
The most time-consuming aspect of the everyday labour in amaranth farming is watering the crop—a task that must be undertaken twice a day. In its early stage of growth, it is delicate and cannot withstand the force of water flowing from a hose. So, farmers sprinkle it gently with water from a pot, a process that could take four to five hours. The result is that farm work leaves them with little time to cook meals of their own.
While it is possible to cultivate the Thaickal cheera on an elevated plot, farmers largely put a pause to cultivation in June which ushers in the rainy season in Kerala. Sathy and Nisha turn to paddy farming during this period.
“For generations, we have prepared the seeds and stocked them for the following year,” says Sathy, who is particular about storing them in a clean cotton cloth. “If you keep them in a plastic tin, they may not sprout,” she says. Amaranth seeds are minute in size, almost lost to the naked eye. “Preparing them and transplanting them for sowing is like raising a child. A seed will stand straight only on the third day. And if it is not quenched with water on the fourth day, it will wither. This means being constantly present in the fields,” Nisha says.
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Thaickal’s amaranth has gained just enough fame on social media for people from other parts of Kerala to come seeking a taste of it. “An Idukki resident travelled to my farm after watching a video about it. He purchased seeds from me. Later, he called to complain that the produce was not as bright and tasty as it was here,” Sathy recalls. The buyer even accused her of handing over lower-quality seeds, so as to dupe him. Sathy rubbishes these claims, asserting instead that the difference lies in the conditions in which the amaranth is grown: the sandy soil in Thaickal, she believes, must imbue the crop with some special attributes.
In Alappuzha, she has 10-15 regular customers who visit her to buy the leafy vegetable. Additionally, 30 previous customers are reminded to return to Thaickal every time the family has produce that is ready to go. It may not be a large pool of customers, but those who come buy in bulk. If they find themselves with unsold stock, Nisha will go to the nearest market to find takers. They have not yet been in a situation where they are left with rotting produce.
Each day begins with the arrival of one particular customer—a vegetable seller—who comes for fresh amaranth before he opens the shutters of his shop in Cherthala. One day in February, with two hours to go before daybreak, Sathy sat on the steps of the verandah of her home, sipping a steaming cup of black coffee. The customer had not arrived by 4:30 am, as he usually does. The delay was not unexpected given the rains that had lashed Cherthala the previous night. The amaranth fields were submerged, but Sathy and Nisha did not want to deviate from their routine. They looked hopefully towards the dark pathway leading into the house for the flash of a two-wheeler.
The customer eventually arrived and made his way into the fields. By the light of torches and mobile flashlights, they waded through ankle-deep muddied waters to reach the bed of the amaranth that was ripe for harvest. Sathy plucked them out and bundled them up, and with Nisha’s help, she foisted the produce weighing 10 kg on her head. They slowly walked out of the field and rested easy only after the bundle had been carefully placed in the customer’s vehicle.
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The renowned quality of the Thaickal amaranth has suffered in the last four years because of leaf blight disease—the appearance of cream-coloured spots that deteriorate into disfigurement of the foliage. Sathy cannot place a finger on the exact cause. “I don’t know if these are changes caused by nature,” she says. Research points to the soil-borne fungi Rhizoctonia solani Kuhn, which thrives in humid conditions.
The holes in the leaves from pest attacks is another issue. Sathy has steadfastly stayed away from the usage of pesticides, with an insistence on following organic methods of cultivation. She approached the officials at south Cherthala’s Krishi Bhavan, seeking a solution, and was advised to use a decoction made from tobacco. But Sathy found it to be ineffective. The only alternative then was to discard the affected leaves, significantly impacting the weight of the amaranth that can go for sale, which also eats away at the expected income. But this is what they must do. “The customer will not buy it if they see even one damaged leaf,” she explains.
The natural fertilisers used on the farm include chicken manure, cow dung and ash. Though they resist the usage of chemical inputs, Sathy notes that the expenses are mounting. “Earlier, 3 kg of chicken manure was priced at Rs. 70. Now a packet barely weighs 15 kg, and we have to pay Rs. 140 for it,” she rues. Despite the rising costs, they persist, since most of the work is done with minimum reliance on external labour.
The steady income that arrives with the toil put into amaranth cultivation motivates farmers like Sathy and Nisha to return to the fields every day. “This is easy if you are willing to make the effort. All the hard work from morning to evening is worth it,” says Sathy. “We have no other inheritance to speak of. We are people who live on a daily income. Farming is all we have,” Sathy sums up, standing next to the eye-catching, red-hued amaranth leaves fluttering in Thaickal’s winds.
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Should a can of cola be taxed similarly to a pack of cigarettes? The Government of India now effectively thinks so. Under the new Goods and Services Tax (GST) rules, the tax on carbonated sugar-sweetened beverages has been raised to 40%, placing these drinks firmly in the country’s ‘sin goods’ category alongside tobacco and alcohol. The goal behind such sin taxes, more politely called health taxes, is to make unhealthy products more expensive so people consume less of them, while also generating revenue to offset the public health costs associated with their consumption.
India’s consumption patterns make the case for such measures particularly urgent. The country is experiencing a rapid rise in non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity, which now account for around 60% of all deaths nationwide and have increased sharply over the past few decades. This trend is closely linked to changing lifestyles, including higher consumption of processed foods, sugary beverages, and diets high in salt and fat.
In many countries, these taxes are structured as specific levies based on sugar content or volume rather than just price, because the harm comes from how much people consume, not how much they spend.
India’s move to levy a higher tax rate on sugary beverages is broadly in line with the World Health Organization’s recommendations, which argue that higher taxes on tobacco, alcohol, and sugary drinks can reduce consumption while raising public revenue. Health taxes are typically applied to products linked to NCDs such as diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. They are designed not just to raise prices, but to change behaviour, encourage reformulation by manufacturers, and signal public health priorities. In many countries, these taxes are structured as specific levies based on sugar content or volume rather than just price, because the harm comes from how much people consume, not how much they spend.
Despite being widely implemented globally, how much do we really know about the effectiveness of these taxes? In this column, I take a look at current scientific evidence to highlight their potential and limitations.
Before I started writing this column, I emailed a colleague—a health economics professor—to ask his opinion about the effectiveness of such taxes. He responded optimistically and pointed me towards several recent studies suggesting that taxes on unhealthy food and drink can improve diets and reduce disease. At first glance, the evidence pointed towards a clear positive corelation between such taxes and improved health outcomes. But as I started reading the papers more carefully, I realised that most of the evidence did not come from observing what actually happened after taxes were introduced. Instead, much of it came from economic modelling.
This is not necessarily a problem, but it is important to understand what modelling means in this context. Much of what we know about health taxes comes from simulations that first estimate how consumers are likely to respond to price increases and then project how those changes in consumption might affect health outcomes. A large systematic review of health taxes in 2017 found that modelling was the most common research method used in this field, far more common than real-world evaluations of the actual taxes.
There are good reasons for this. Measuring how people respond to price changes in the real world is extremely difficult. When a government introduces a tax on sugary drinks or ultra-processed food, the price goes up, but many other things change at the same time. Companies change product sizes or recipes, supermarkets run promotions, new products appear, and people switch to cheaper alternatives that may or may not be healthier. Isolating the effect of the tax from all these other factors is methodologically hard, especially over long periods of time. Ideally, researchers would track the same households for years and observe exactly how their purchasing behaviour changes as prices change, but that kind of data is expensive to generate and often difficult to access, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
It is relatively straightforward to show that people buy fewer taxed drinks when prices rise. It is much harder to show that they consume fewer calories overall or develop fewer chronic diseases as a result.
As a result, researchers often rely on models. Typically, they estimate how sensitive people are to price changes (i.e., what economists call price elasticity) and then simulate what would happen to consumption patterns and health outcomes if prices increased by a certain amount. In the Indian context, for example, one recent study used household consumption data to estimate how different income groups respond to food price changes and then used a microsimulation model to project the effects of higher taxes on foods high in fat, sugar and salt over the next 30 years. The researchers simulated changes in nutrient intake, body weight, and the incidence of diseases like diabetes and heart disease and then estimated the impact on healthcare costs. The results suggested that higher taxes could reduce disease and health spending over time, but these results depend heavily on assumptions about how consumers respond to prices, how companies respond to taxes, and how changes in diet translate into changes in health many years later.
This approach is common in countries where comprehensive real-world data is limited. Even where taxes have been implemented, such as sugar taxes in Mexico, the UK, and parts of Europe, the clearest evidence tends to come from purchases rather than health outcomes. It is relatively straightforward to show that people buy fewer taxed drinks when prices rise. It is much harder to show that they consume fewer calories overall or develop fewer chronic diseases as a result. Health outcomes take years to change, and by the time they do, many other factors have changed too.
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The moral debate on health taxes is as complicated as the economic one. Opponents of health taxes often argue that such policies are paternalistic. The argument is that if adults choose to drink sugary beverages or eat unhealthy food, that is a personal choice, and governments should not interfere in private decisions. This view draws on a long liberal tradition in political philosophy that places a high value on individual autonomy and freedom of choice. From this perspective, health taxes are seen as governments acting like overbearing parents, nudging citizens toward ‘better’ behaviour whether they want it or not. Food industry lobby groups often amplify this line of argument to resist the introduction of such taxes, framing them as unjustified intrusions on personal freedom.
What looks like a free choice is often heavily influenced by the food environment people live in. Taxes, in this view, do not remove choice but alter the environment in which choices are made.
But public health ethics looks at the issue differently. The case for health taxes is not just that individuals make unhealthy choices, but that these choices are shaped by environments, marketing, pricing, and availability. In other words, what looks like a free choice is often heavily influenced by the food environment people live in. Taxes, in this view, do not remove choice but alter the environment in which choices are made.
There is also the question of who bears the costs. Diet-related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease place a large burden on public health systems, which means that the costs are shared by society, not just by the individual consuming sugary drinks. This creates what economists call a social cost, and one of the classic justifications for taxation is to make the price of a product reflect its true social cost.
At the same time, health taxes raise concerns about fairness. Critics often argue that these taxes are regressive, meaning they take up a larger share of income from poorer households, who also tend to consume more of the taxed products. Supporters, however, argue that lower-income groups also suffer disproportionately from diet-related diseases, meaning they may also benefit the most from reduced consumption.
Also read: In an age of food abundance, why does ‘hidden hunger’ hold India back?
If health taxes are not a silver bullet, what else should governments do?
One of the most consistent findings in public health research is that taxes work best when they are part of a broader policy package rather than a standalone measure. Prices do influence behaviour, but so do many other things: what is available in school canteens, how food is marketed to children, how products are labelled, and what kinds of foods are subsidised by governments. In other words, the food environment matters as much as (and sometimes more than) individual willpower.
This is particularly important in countries like India, where diets are changing rapidly, and ultra-processed foods are becoming cheaper and more heavily marketed. Taxing sugary drinks and other unhealthy foods may reduce consumption, but it does not automatically make healthier food more accessible or affordable. An important difference between health taxes on tobacco and alcohol and health taxes on food is that consuming food (even if unhealthy) is not optional. People do not need cigarettes or alcohol to survive, but they do need nutrients. For many low-income households, cheap packaged foods and sweetened beverages are not just treats but an affordable source of calories, which means that if prices rise, more affordable and accessible alternatives must be made available.
An important difference between health taxes on tobacco and alcohol and health taxes on food is that consuming food (even if unhealthy) is not optional.
This makes it important to think about taxes and subsidies together. If governments raise taxes on sugary drinks and unhealthy foods, they could use that revenue to subsidise fresh produce and essential cereals, invest in businesses that produce healthier alternatives, improve school meal programmes, or invest in public health campaigns. In this approach, the goal is not just to discourage unhealthy consumption, but to actively make healthier diets more accessible.
The GST overhaul of 2025 does reflect this policy direction to some extent. Taxes on suar-sweetened, carbonated, and caffeinated beverages have been raised to 40%, while rates on essential foods such as vegetables, fruits, and some nuts have been reduced from 12% to 5%. Some relatively healthier convenience foods, such as pasta and prepared soups, have also seen their tax rates lowered from 18% to 5%. However, other foods high in sugar, fats, and salt such as fruit juices, jams, ice cream, confectionery, instant noodles, packaged snacks, and even traditional Indian sweets, are now taxed at 5%, down from earlier rates of 12–18%. In several cases, these reductions have occurred despite calls to increase taxes on such products.
This perhaps points to the limits of relying on taxes alone. Around the world, there is a strong case for regulation beyond taxation. Restrictions on marketing to children, clear front-of-pack warning labels, limits on trans fats, and reformulation targets for salt and sugar have all been used in different countries. These policies often receive less attention than taxes, but in some cases, they may have a larger impact because they change the default choices available to consumers rather than relying on individuals to respond to price increases.
Ultimately, health taxes are best understood not as a solution on their own, but as one tool among many. The real challenge is not just to make unhealthy food more expensive, but to make healthy food more affordable and accessible.
Also read: Food fortification 101: Can foods built in with nutrients counter malnutrition, deficiencies?
Cover Art by Sharath Ravishankar
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What others saw as trash, I saw as my calling.
Having grown up in Chennai in the 1980s, the sight of overflowing garbage bins in residential areas and careless dumping on the roadside was an everyday occurrence. When I moved overseas after my marriage, spending years in different countries, my relationship to waste changed, owing to a difference in laws pertaining to its management and the way in which these laws were implemented.
During this period, a habit that stayed with me was segregating the trash we generated in our home. It became second nature, and so, when we returned to India in 2017, I wanted to be a little more mindful about waste. I began by managing the organic waste in our home. Through sheer coincidence, I came across a social media post from my friend about composting at home—cementing my belief that this was, in fact, a mission meant for me.
I then joined the Namma Ooru Foundation (NOF), a non-governmental waste management organisation, as a volunteer. Here, my eyes were opened to the magnitude of waste Chennai generates. As of January 2025, data from the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) suggests that the city produces 5,900 tonnes of waste daily.
Volunteering at NOF also taught me about the powerful role individuals can play in managing it. For close to a year, I was engaged in their waste management awareness initiatives in schools, colleges and even temples. In the process, I learnt about the regulations governing solid waste management (SWM).
Back home, in my neighbourhood of Kasturba Nagar, Adyar, the status quo remained unchallenged; things went on as they always have. One day, as I sat on my balcony and tried to savour a cup of coffee—with the satisfaction that I was part of a worthy cause—I was forced to confront the view before my eyes: overflowing dustbins right outside my apartment building. Deep down, I knew I had to do something about it. I decided to take the first step, going door-to-door to raise awareness among my neighbours, one conversation at a time.
There was no looking back after that.
In 2018, segregation at source and door-to-door collection of segregated waste were still alien concepts in Chennai. This meant that I had to appeal to two stakeholders—the residents of housing societies, and the local government.
I approached the GCC and Ramky Enviro Engineers Limited, the private company commissioned to handle waste in my ward. They promised to send a separate vehicle to collect and process segregated waste, but on one condition: a hundred households in my locality had to segregate waste at the source.
It was obvious that the catalyst should be the residents themselves. I knocked on the doors of 2500 households located on eight main roads in Kasturba Nagar, explaining the basics—how to segregate, where the segregated waste goes, and where the mixed waste goes. While some welcomed the idea, others shut their doors on it. The few who joined me became the founding team behind the Residents of Kasturbanagar Association–ROKA. The movement was kickstarted with the Azhagiya Adyar event in June 2018, which featured workshops on composting led by experts in the field and activities for children based on the principles of SWM. The response to the event boosted my confidence.
I had to know and understand the system in and out, because I strongly believe that systems change behaviour faster than slogans do.
By 2019, we had seven resident volunteers who took on the task of talking to more people from different neighbourhoods about waste segregation. It was a task that called for footslogging, convincing, rapport building and understanding garbage—and people—better.
Parallely, I was also visiting the facilities installed by GCC across Chennai, establishing contacts with ward- and zonal-level officers and senior officials. I had to know and understand the system in and out, because I strongly believe that systems change behaviour faster than slogans do.
Most of our afternoons and evenings across 2018 and 2019 were spent ironing out the basics, from training conservancy workers to use tricycles for collection (modified with baskets at the back for waste), to recommendations about where residents should buy their coloured bins—green for organic, blue for dry, and red bin for sanitary & domestic hazardous waste.
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In the early years, we were keen to learn from other groups who had gone through their own journeys of trial and error with similar initiatives. We paid a visit to Bengaluru’s HSR Layout, where lane composters (located in shared spaces like public roads to process the organic waste collected in the neighbourhood through aerobic composting) had been installed to understand the day-to-day operations and challenges on the ground. This visit, combined with meetings with members of the Solid Waste Management Round Table (SWMRT)—a collective of practitioners in Bengaluru promoting the adoption of sustainable methods—helped us to chart the way ahead for ROKA. To this day, SWMRT are our go-to experts for troubleshooting and sharing knowledge on composting ideas and equipment like recyclers.
It has been my dream to create model spaces for in-situ or decentralised waste management systems, which can serve communities, schools, temples, restaurants and offices, and which can be replicated in similar spaces across Chennai. To some extent, we have achieved this dream in our own community through the We Segregate project, which has been running successfully since October 2023. Its main focus areas are community composting and low-value plastics (flexible and multi-layer plastics like provision packaging, biscuit/chocolate wrappers, milk packets), a problematic category in plastic waste, both in terms of collection and processing. To aid in the collection of such packaging material separately from other waste items, a ‘punch-the-plastic’ hook was designed by students at the Indian Institute of Technology–Madras. The We Segregate project is supported by the Okapi Research and Advisory and Chennai Resilience Centre, and funded by the Urban Ocean program, whose objective is ending ocean plastic pollution globally.
We could gauge residents’ acceptance of the project from the incremental improvements in segregation levels in 1005 households. They could see the results of their efforts, as their organic waste was converted into compost—and readily available for their own gardens. This transformed their involvement from one of mild interest to a more proactive approach.
We could gauge residents’ acceptance of the project from the incremental improvements in segregation levels in 1005 households.
Having recognised that numbers and figures are, undoubtedly, a measure of success, ROKA and Okapi have been diligently maintaining as much data as possible over the last two and a half years. The wet waste processed through community composting is about 11 metric tons, and the compost generated is 3700 kg. Of low-value plastics, we have collected nearly 850 kg and sent them to SPRECO, a Chennai-based social enterprise whose focus is recycling.
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While ROKA’s projects progressed at the community level, we were also exploring ideas to expand the scope of our work to schools and colleges. Coincidentally, in 2019, the GCC’s Chennai High School, located at Kamaraj Avenue in Adyar, became the venue for a waste collection drive we undertook in collaboration with the corporation. Little did we know about how it would define our mission in the years to come.
What started as awareness drives among students slowly expanded into building in-situ compost to show them how organic waste from kitchens can be turned into manure. Soon, we built a kitchen garden on the terrace of the school; the produce grown here is used to prepare meals in the school’s kitchen. When we noticed an excess of food waste, we installed a food waste treatment plant (biogas) in December 2024. Now, the produce from the garden goes to the kitchen, the organic waste from the kitchen goes to the biogas plant, which produces biogas that is used for cooking in the kitchen and manure that is eventually used as a fertiliser for the garden—creating a circular system within an educational institution. Since December 2024, a total of 5000 kg of food waste has been converted into biogas, helping the school save on 12 LPG cylinders in the process, making this a ‘model school’ for circular management of organic waste.
The initiative paved the way for us to take up similar steps in more corporation-run schools. Currently, ROKA works with three such institutions, for awareness about solid waste management and the installation of biogas plants. Of these, the biogas plant in Chennai High School, Thiruvanmiyur, which was established in November 2025, has processed close to 1300 kg of food waste thus far. We continue to build new relationships with more schools and colleges.
Since December 2024, a total of 5000 kg of food waste has been converted into biogas, helping the school save on 12 LPG cylinders in the process, making this a ‘model school’ for circular management of organic waste.
Also read: How Jayshree Vencatesan got Chennai to finally care for its wetlands
Once a group of individuals curious to learn from other communities, today ROKA has assumed the role of a mentor for those who want to venture into waste management practices, aiding them in the replication of the Kasturba Nagar model. For example, the apartment building Clover By the River in Kotturpuram began composting its wet waste under Okapi and ROKA’s support. Recently, Kalakshetra Colony in Besant Nagar undertook a door-to-door campaign to improve waste segregation and collect soft plastics under our guidance. There has been a growing interest in information from experts, especially from gated communities that fall under the ‘bulk waste generator’ category.
Over the years, we have encouraged a shift in perspective, so that people look at waste as a resource.
I should not forget to mention our bi-annual dry waste collection drive, started in 2019, which has now become a city-level movement. Over the years, we have encouraged a shift in perspective, so that people look at waste as a resource. When it is segregated and collected homogenously, it becomes an economically viable venture for the aggregators or recyclers through decentralised waste collection drives.
Through it all, my husband and son have been my pillars, living this life right alongside me. There are tough days, but moments like a 94-year-old stranger calling to cheer me on reminds me, this—ROKA’s impactful work—matters!
Cover Image Credit: Aparna Ganesan and Nanda Kumar
Dawn has only just enveloped the Kukudi village in Nabarangpur, Odisha’s maize basket, when 41-year-old Krushna Randhari sets off for a field, carrying a hoe. He quickly gets to work, loosening the soil between rows of tall hybrid maize plants that have dominated the landscape for about 12 years.
As his hands fall into a rhythm, memories of a past when his family, which belongs to the Bhatra tribal community, cultivated traditional varieties of corn—or ‘maka’ as it is locally known—come flooding back. Red, white, yellow, purple, even saffron-coloured cobs used to be sown with pulses before the monsoon. They were integral to rainfed intercropping systems (including millets, tubers and vegetables, too) commonly practised in Adivasi districts, which sustained nutrition at a household level.
These native varieties adapted well to local conditions, ensuring resilience during times of unfavourable weather. Their seeds were treasured and preserved across three or more generations (150–200 years) for their taste, ability to last in storage, and resilience against drought.
What does this mean for gleaming pearls of rainbow-hued maka, and the farmers who relied on it for nourishment?
Then came the Mukhyamantri Maka Mission, launched in 2023, which boosted yields and marketable surplus in Odisha, widening the state’s embrace of hybrid seeds which began during the Green Revolution. While traditional maize produces around 10–15 quintals per acre, hybrid varieties yield 35–40 quintals per acre in comparison. In the process, hybrids have also increased dependence on chemical inputs, whose costs steadily rise, and hardened the soil, depleting its fertility. Over the course of mere decades, local agrobiodiversity has eroded, driven by a productivity gap.
What does this mean for gleaming pearls of rainbow-hued maka, and the farmers who relied on it for nourishment?
Maize production in the state has grown from 7.3 lakh metric tonnes in 2019-20 to 11.3 lakh metric tonnes in 2023-24—a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.5%, according to the Odisha Economic Survey 2024-25. Under the MMM scheme, the state government allocated Rs. 481.94 crore over five years to expand cultivation across 45 blocks in 15 districts.
Farmers receive seed support along with an incentive of Rs. 2,500 per acre to cover the cost of bio-inputs and fertilisers. Line sowing is promoted, using 6 kgs of seed per acre. The traditional practice of intercropping maize with legumes to improve soil fertility is encouraged. The recommended pattern follows a 1:2 ratio of maize to legume rows.
Operational guidelines also encourage on-farm preparation and use of bio-inputs such as jeevamrutha, beejamrutha and neemastra. Forty-five Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) have been engaged to procure maize directly from farmers and ensure better price realisation.
The scale of adoption has been significant. During the 2025–26 kharif season, 17,365 farmers reportedly cultivated maize over 14,228 hectares under the MMM, producing 87,846 metric tonnes. Average yields rose from about 3.18 tonnes per hectare under traditional practices to between 5.3 and 7.8 tonnes per hectare with hybrids and improved agronomy. Support was also extended to sweet corn cultivation, benefiting 1,293 farmers and yielding over 10,600 tonnes.
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Randhari’s hometown Nabarangpur aside, the top maize-producing districts include Keonjhar, Koraput, Ganjam and Gajapati, which have emerged as hubs of this transformation. Nabarangpur alone has produced over eight lakh tonnes a year.
Randhari cultivates maize on six acres and baby corn on two. While he initially received hybrid seeds and training under the MMM, he says poor germination rates pushed him to buy seeds from the local market. “I purchased varieties like DKC 9165 and DKC 9081 at Rs. 600 per kg. They yield up to 35–40 quintals per acre,” he says. But these returns come at a cost: the farmer spends Rs. 10,000–12,000 per acre on chemical fertilisers and insecticides.
In the Asanga village of the same block, which has access to lift irrigation (a method that transports water using water-lifting devices, such as electric pumps), hybrid maize cultivated in the rabi season is a major cash crop, spanning across nearly 900 acres. “Last year, I harvested about 285 quintals from nine acres and sold most of it at Rs. 1,800 per quintal,” says 38-year-old Hemananda Mali, who earned roughly Rs. 4.5 lakh. Production depends heavily on urea, DAP, potash, micronutrients and supplementary organic manure like Gobardhan Gold to improve soil fertility and promote plant growth.
But these returns come at a cost: the farmer spends Rs. 10,000–12,000 per acre on chemical fertilisers and insecticides.
In the neighbouring Koraput district, 12 acres of Duryadhan Bisoi’s farm have been devoted to hybrid maize for over a decade. After low yields from MMM-provided seeds, the 55-year-old farmer shifted to commercial hybrids such as CP333, CP555 and Adventa. “These seeds cost Rs. 800–1,000 per kg and around 7–8 kg is required for an acre. Among them, CP555 delivers the highest yield, around 30 quintals per acre, but at a steep cost,” Bisoi says.
Veteran cultivators of the crop like Bisoi fear that farming it is becoming increasingly unviable; market prices fall while fertilisers and pesticide bills run into thousands per acre. Beyond economics, he points to the long-term ecological impacts which cannot be ignored after three years pass, when the changes in the soil become palpable.
In recent years, drops in prices have been attributed to slowed-down demand from the poultry and ethanol industries. Simultaneously, the lack of local processing facilities has flooded rural markets with grain. “Traders from outside the state are buying maize at very low prices,” says Bisworanjan Parida, Regional Coordinator, Access Development Service, the NGO which serves as the MMM’s programme secretariat.
In recent years, drops in prices have been attributed to slowed-down demand from the poultry and ethanol industries.
To address this, district administrations are collaborating with private agencies. In Nabarangpur, for instance, a maize starch factory began trial runs in 2025, and is expected to procure large volumes directly from farmers. Plans are also underway to establish poultry feed units, improve storage infrastructure and promote decentralised, community-run processing units.
However, Parida stressed that strengthening FPOs and building robust price-support mechanisms remain critical. “Farmers need protection from sudden price crashes and returns closer to the minimum support price (MSP) during market stress,” he says. At the time of publishing this article, the MSP for maize hovered around Rs. 2,400 per quintal.
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Hybrid maize lacks the taste and digestibility of traditional varieties, say farmers. The switch to high-yielding varieties has had the most direct impact on their own diets, as the use of maize shrinks in local kitchens. “It spoils quickly and can’t be stored for months,” says 36-year-old farmer Parbati Beheradalai from the Betarsingh village in Gajapati district. “We eat very little of it. Even our cattle don't prefer fodder made from it.”
Mandia pej, a porridge made from ragi, maize and rice, was once a staple across southern and western Odisha. With native maize disappearing, the dish is now prepared without it. “With every lost variety, we are losing the foods that sustained our communities for generations,” says Sumitra Pujari, a 32-year-old farmer, also from Betarsingh.
Whichever native maize varieties have not yet been lost to time or profit, are now grown in small quantities—only for household consumption. Stunningly, these cultivars are able to produce a harvest in the poorest of seasons, making them ideal for times of climate crisis. Farmers in Nabarangpur and Koraput districts recall that red, white, yellow, and mixed-coloured maize could survive delayed monsoons and other unpredictable weather because the seeds of these crops, preserved and used over multiple generations, were genetically diverse and learnt to adapt. They continue growing under low soil moisture.
Traditional maize may recover after intermittent periods of drought by producing smaller cobs, but hybrid maize shows poor pollination rates and incomplete grain filling under the same stress conditions. It is acutely sensitive to even minor shifts in rainfall or a rise in temperatures during flowering.
And yet, hybrid maize proliferates. This expansion of maize monocultures has reduced common grazing lands in Adivasi regions. Tribal households rear cows, bullocks, goats, and sheep, which are integral to both their livelihoods and cultural practices. Livestock was once central to manure supply and draft power in hilly terrain, besides offering a financial safety net during emergencies. “Earlier, our cattle and goats grazed freely on village commons and forest edges. Now those lands are all under maize cultivation ,” says Prasanna Beheradalai, a 55-year-old farmer from Betarsing. As grazing land disappears, many households are abandoning livestock rearing, cutting off access to organic manure. “We now buy chemical fertilisers because there is no dung left,” says Surendra Pujari, another farmer from Betarsing.
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Odisha’s experience with millets offers a possible way forward. The Shree Anna Abhiyan (formerly known as the Odisha Millets Mission) was launched in 2017 to promote the cultivation, consumption and overall commercial value of millets in the state. Under this programme, in 2024, Odisha became the first state in the country to formally recognise and release four finger millet landraces—Kundra Bati, Laxmipur Kalia, Malyabanta Mami and Gupteswar Bharati—integrating them into policy and procurement systems.
This expansion of maize monocultures has reduced common grazing lands in Adivasi regions.
“A similar approach is needed for promising traditional maize varieties,” says Debabrata Panda, Assistant Professor at the Central University of Odisha. Bringing them into formal seed and food policy frameworks can strengthen agrobiodiversity conservation and improve tribal food security, he adds.
State officials say the concern is recognised. “In the initial phase, we prioritised high-yielding varieties because of their productivity," says K. S. Redish Kumar, State Coordinator, MMM, Access Development Service, Bhubaneswar. “In the coming years, we plan to establish community seed banks to conserve traditional maize and link them to nutrition and food security programmes.”
Edited by Anushka Mukherjee and Neerja Deodhar
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