Based on her investigative series on the central government’s rice fortification programme, ‘Our Rice Tastes of Spring’ highlights why the locals’ right to control their own food systems matters.
One morning, an assembly is called in the fictitious village of Sohar. GainsMan—a character in Our Rice Tastes of Spring (2025)—has just arrived dressed in dark clothes and shoes. The farmers in the audience have never seen anyone like him. Holding up a packet of whiter, faster growing rice, he asks them: “All of you grow rice, but what do you earn? Are you able to sell the rice? Why do you grow so many varieties when you know you cannot sell them all?”
At first glance, the new rice varieties GainsMan was offering—modern, hybrid—seem easy to grow and sell. But his presence also compels a broader question: What happens when external interests, which do not account for agrarian livelihoods, shape our food systems?
For paddy growers in Jharkhand’s Chhotanagpur for instance, where the book is set, rice is much more than a commodity. It is a shared resource, spanning diverse indigenous varieties—be it Matla, Lakshmi Dighal, or Noichi-dhaan—with distinct histories, characteristics, and climate-adaptable traits. Replacing them with GainsMan’s hybrids would not only mean a loss of this diversity, but also lead to adverse social, nutritional, and ecological outcomes. More importantly, it risks eroding the sovereignty of food production, moving it away from indigenous communities and into larger transnational markets.
Consequences surrounding the proliferation of hybrid varieties, however, have often been overlooked in India’s food policy. Anumeha Yadav, investigative journalist and the book’s author, has extensively reported on this oversight, especially in the case of Jharkhand.
In 2023, Anumeha investigated the central government’s rice fortification programme, published as a three-part series on The Wire. Under this scheme, rice kernels distributed in India’s public schemes were artificially enhanced with factory-made micronutrients. The intent, on paper, was to address high rates of anemia and malnutrition in the country. But in reality, Anumeha writes, this controversial solution—backed by a coalition of major food companies—had little accountability over its safety and quality, proving detrimental to vulnerable groups.
Last month, the scheme was temporarily suspended, citing a reduction in the shelf life of fortified rice during storage and handling, and stipulating the need for developing “a more effective mechanism for delivery of nutrients”.
Solutions outside the market-based model, in comparison, have received little attention. In her own reporting, Anumeha highlights how several varieties of traditional rice, which are not only inherently nutritious, but also ensure food security in increasingly unpredictable weather, are increasingly becoming extinct. As social activist Veronica Dungdung, who grew up in Subdega, a forested area on the border of Jharkhand and northern Odisha, tells Anumeha: “Market determines all life [everything] these days—what we eat, we wear. Market ka formula [the way of the market] has entered and dominated our lives, our imagination and minds. But that cannot be our way of life, I believe.”
Although a fictional account, Our Rice Tastes of Spring draws on this extensive body of reporting work. Encompassing interviews, findings, as well as personal relationships, it critiques the corporate capture of food systems and what we risk losing when we privatise the commons.
Read our interview with Anumeha to know more about the process of putting the book together, how her work as a journalist informed the story:
I have reported from Jharkhand for over a decade. The first time I went there was when The Hindu posted me in the region. Jharkhand, of which Chhotanagpur is a part, is our country’s mining heartland, holding more than a third of India’s coal reserves. Over the years, I reported on a number of extractive processes in this rich forest region. Even as these destructive processes were taking place, it was here that I got the opportunity to learn and document stories of resilience by the local communities, their efforts to defend their lives, livelihoods, culture, memory, and the natural environment. Living and reporting from the region shaped my politics and beliefs.
India is one of the largest food producers in the world, yet a large number of communities grapple with hunger and undernutrition.
During the Green Revolution, the government promoted the use of certain hybrid wheat and rice seeds. Indiscriminate use of fertilisers and pesticides have made our soils barren. As a result, according to what government studies show, grains such as rice now contain less micronutrients such as iron and zinc than some decades ago.
Instead of technical fixes such as factory fortification—the proposed solution for this crisis—I wanted to bring the attention back to a root question: What are we doing to our rich food diversity, our seeds?
In my reporting, I found the claims of food fortification as a cure for anemia and undernutrition to be overstated. In fact, there was little or no testing [to confirm the quality and the levels of vitamins and iron]. In Jharkhand and Odisha, Adivasi communities who have grown rice for centuries told me they were reluctant to eat “plastic-looking” rice kernels. The variety of lentils, gourds, berries, yam, small fish, and the forest produce they had been eating were getting displaced or seen as inferior.
Instead of technical fixes such as factory fortification—the proposed solution for this crisis—I wanted to bring the attention back to a root question: What are we doing to our rich food diversity, our seeds?
After writing the news series for The Wire, I asked Spitting Image to help me create a picture book to tell the story of what was happening. We wanted to take it back to these rural communities as well as to both young and old readers. We hoped the format of a picture book would help transcend age and literacy.
In describing the rice varieties and the food, I relied on my conversations in a hamlet in Latehar, East Singhbhum, and in northern Odisha. In just two villages in East Singhbhum, Adivasi farmers shared memories of cultivating so many rice varieties with lyrical names: Chandra Kanthi, Lolaat, Joradhaan, Maanjhi, Makarkanthi, Kaankri, Noichi-dhaan. It was a treasure trove of rice varieties that were being lost in the switch to modern hybrid varieties.
I was struck upon learning about rice varieties such as Lakshmi Dighal and Rani Kajal which can elongate their stems as floodwaters rise, or those like Getu and Kallurundai that can survive saline water and provide grains even during a cyclone. The diversity of these seeds and grain holds the way to adapt to our changing climate and unpredictable weather.
I also wanted to bring attention to varieties such as Dudhe Bolta and Garib-Sal rice that are naturally abundant in micronutrients such as iron and zinc, several times more than the kernels artificially fortified and infused with powdered iron in a factory.
The disappearance of these indigenous crops does not mean losing just the particular seed and variety forever, but also the loss of knowledge and skills in identifying and cultivating native varieties. We wanted to use illustrations and imagine an alternative future where we, as a society and a species, preserve these rice varieties instead of them perishing or going extinct.
The fortification policy opened up a new uncharted market for multinational vitamin companies and the larger food industry. For corporations, these regions become untapped markets, enhancing the scope for future dependencies and profits. The Public Distribution Scheme (PDS) in India is the largest food safety scheme in the world, reaching 800 million individuals. In comparison, the World Food Programme (WFP) reached 160 million people in 2022.
Each time a product is tested or introduced in a large-scale public sector programme, it expands to millions of new users who do not have the choice to forgo their subsidised grains and seeds. People and communities are thus turned into a vast consumer base rather than cultivators with their own knowledge and decision systems, food and farming cultures, and values and preferences in accordance with the local ecology.
Traditional cultivators can distinguish varieties by their flowering time, by observing their leaf, or from the size, colours, shapes of the grain. It is not only an ecological resource, but also a repository of knowledge systems which mainstream experts do not know of, or acknowledge adequately.
Globally, the advocacy for chemically-fortifying food is led by an international consortium called Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN). In exchange for focusing on micronutrient deficiencies, GAIN assisted large food companies by lobbying for favourable tariffs and tax rates, and speedier regulatory review of new products in countries such as India and Brazil (read more about the different entities that the Gates Foundation funds and their financial interests in the vitamins market—an industry that has grown to over US $45 billion in 2022).
Each time a product is tested or introduced in a large-scale public sector programme, it expands to millions of new users who do not have the choice to forgo their subsidised grains and seeds. People and communities are thus turned into a vast consumer base rather than cultivators.
GAIN’s Business Alliance for Food Fortification—as Dr Arun Gupta, who convenes the network Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest (NAPi), pointed out, and I confirmed with my investigation—included some corporations which have been accused of breaches of human rights and code violations that contribute to malnutrition.
NAPi staged a public protest in central Delhi when GAIN first started lobbying with members of India’s parliament in 2008.
Food sovereignty activists such as ASHA-Kisan Swaraj India expressed concern that when foundations such as GAIN get access and influence in programme areas of what we eat, little or no governing framework or oversight exists to show how they operate, or make them or their results accountable to public mandates.
I took the photograph in Jala village in Latehar of a gram sabha of mainly Oraon Adivasi cultivators who were protesting turning 237 hectares of forest and farming land into a coal mine. They were contesting that they have, for centuries, relied on this land for gathering forest produce such as mahua, rugra mushroom, jamun, amla, jackfruit, ber, wild edible plants, and medicinal plants. In these contestations, debates, and meetings, rural communities try to put forward their questions of seed sovereignty and agro-ecology, though they are not always heard. We included it to give more space and attention to such intergenerational memory and resistance.
We got a chance to show the book at meetings in the villages in Sohar and Chaurha Panchayat. I was there at the beginning of March last year and it was a lot of fun. As an investigative reporter, I often write things or reports which are lengthy and in the English language. I feel there is a gap within the Internet and the news format, and many individuals, especially in villages, cannot access it or relate to it.
Here, I witnessed some fun, energetic responses, and even received tons of corrections. They told us that we got the paddy plant flag leaves and angles wrong in a few cases, so we spent a few weeks correcting everything they pointed out.
The pages where the rice varieties are depicted evoked the most interest, with Adivasi farmers discussing and identifying the varieties amongst themselves. Some of the young residents were able to even spot the trees, particular spots of the plateau, and the elders whom we have based the characters on.
The Chhotanagpur region, spanning Jharkhand and Odisha, is a biodiversity hotspot yet is often depicted as a ‘backward’ region. The mainstream tends to have a warped presentation of what is ‘progress’ and what is ‘backward’.
A part of the aim in writing the book was that as more of us learn about [these issues], we will think harder about how to preserve our precious genetic and cultural inheritance. Several seeds do remain and so does memory.
When I present the book to someone who grew up eating rice in villages, they often share the stories of the many varieties they grew up with—red rice in their grandmother’s home in Begusarai in Bihar; a tall, heavy grain-bearing variety that would ripen and fall in paddy fields in Thrissur, Kerala; or a very fragrant Jeeraphool variety in Mahuadanr, Jharkhand, that they could smell being cooked from a distance.
It has made me realise that we need different cultures and thinking around measuring productivity, what is socially useful and ecologically sound, and how we value diverse foods, nutrition, biodiversity, our long-term health, and even what we think makes a good life.
This is an excerpt from Our Rice Tastes of Spring (2024) published by Red Panda. Excerpted with permission from the author and publisher.
Our Rice Tastes of Spring is being published in Marathi and Hindi as बासन्ती स्वाद के हमारे चावल (Baasanti Swad ke Hamara Chawal) by Eklavya, and is expected to be released by August 2026.
Read Anumeha Yadav’s full investigative series on The Wire.
Anumeha Yadav focuses on questions related to work and social policy. Her articles highlight the effects of government initiatives on village and forest communities, and those who migrate to work in cities. She has reported for national dailies, including ‘The Hindu’ as its Jharkhand correspondent, ‘The Indian Express’, and ‘Scroll’. She enjoys riding a two-wheeler under the sal trees in Latehar, Jharkhand. You can follow her work on WordPress and X.
Spitting Image is an animation and design studio based in Bengaluru, run by Sandhya Visvanathan, Aniruddh Menon, and Shoumik Biswas. The trio loves making art and music, and that’s what brought them together.
Deepshika Pasupunuri is the Senior TL Copywriter and Web Manager at The Locavore. On weekends, you’ll find her grappling with all the unread paperbacks on her bookshelf.
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