Food Habits of the 'Adivasis"

Devinder Sharma draws attention to a report that fewer crop species are feeding the world than 50 years ago – raising concerns about the resilience of the global food system, as a study in the journal PNAS has shown.

The authors warned a loss of diversity meant more people were dependent on key crops, leaving them more exposed to harvest failures. Higher consumption of energy-dense crops could also contribute to a global rise in heart disease and diabetes, they added. “Over the past 50 years, we are seeing that diets around the world are changing and they are becoming more similar – what we call the ‘globalised diet’,” co-author Colin Khoury, a scientist from the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture, said.” The diet is composed of big, major crops such as wheat, rice, potatoes and sugar. It also includes crops that were not important 50 years ago but have become very important now, particularly oil crops like soybean,” BBC News reported in Crop diversity decline ‘threatens food security’

Well, this report is among the several others which have highlighted the threat food security as well as nutrition security faces from the ‘globalised diet’.

We are all responsible directly or indirectly for this decline. If I were to ask you to count the foods that you eat I bet you will not be able to name more than a few. Wheat, rice, tomato, cucumber, apple, banana … and you begin to reel out the names you know. Not many can name even twenty. Try a little harder, and you will end up probably with another ten. If you are a little more aware, you might struggle with a few more names. That’s it.

That’s how narrow and limited our food sense has come down to. The more we are urbanized, the chances are the less we know about our foods and the rich food culture that prevailed in our country. The disconnect with the huge diversity of food over the ages has actually alienated the modern civilization from the virtues of the vast repository of biological wealth that existed. Modern living has snapped the symbiotic relationship that existed with nature.

When Laxmi Pidikaka, a tribal woman from southern Odisha explained to me the importance and relevance of each of the 1,582 food species that were displayed at the recently concluded Adivasi Food Festival held at Munda village in Rayagada district, I was left not only amazed with the richness of food around us, but came back with a feeling that how uneducated I was when it came to mankind’s basic requirement of food. Of the 1,582 food species (and that included different kinds of fish, crabs and birds that are part of the daily diet of some tribals), as many as 972 were uncultivated. Yes, you heard it right. Uncultivated foods.

A dozen tribes living in Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand and Maharashtra had gathered at the Adivasi Food Festival to celebrate their foods, which is basically an appreciation of the traditional food cultures linked to their age-old farming practices providing them nutritional security while protecting and conserving the nature’s bounty. Members from the Kondh, Koya, Didai, Santhal, Juanga, Baiga, Bhil, Pahari Korva, Paudi Bhuiyan and Birhor from more than 300 villages spread across the tribal heartland came to showcase their foods, and also spent the next day discussing how to protect the traditional farming system from the onslaught of the National Food Security Act that aimed at providing them with 5 kg of wheat, rice or millets.

“We don’t need your food security system,” Minati Tuika of Katlipadar village told me. “The more you open ration shops in our villages, the more you force us to abandon our own food security system built by our forefathers so painstakingly over the centuries. Please leave us alone.”

But why was she so angry with what most policy makers and planners see as development? Don’t most educated elite think that tribals are uneducated and uncivilized, and therefore all out efforts must be made to bring them into the mainline?

“Don’t teach us what development is. We conserved and preserved our plants, our soil, our forests, and our rivers over the centuries. Now you want to take these away, and destroy them. And then you call it development.”

Saying this, she hid her face. When I coaxed her to explain to me how the adivasis were living in tandem with the nature, and how the modern system was distancing them from their traditional cultures and the community control over resources, she agreed to first show me some plants that had multiple uses demonstrating the traditional skills of the community which preserved and used them without pushing them into the extinct category.

She showed me the Siali beans. Quite a big sized dry bean whose seeds are eaten after boiling or roasting, the branches are used to make ropes, and the leaves are used to make leaf plates. Kusum Koli leaves are used for fodder, fruits are eaten raw, wood is used as firewood, and oil is extracted from the seeds. The seed oil serves as a mosquito repellent and also treats certain skin diseases. Even the better known Mahua trees (above) have multiple uses. Leaves are used for fodder, flowers are used to make jaggery, liquor and porridge. Flowers are also consumed and often sold in the market, a kind of a curry is made from the fruits besides being used as fodder, and the seed provides cooking oil after extraction. All these are unfortunately classified as uncultivated plants in agricultural parlance, and therefore do not receive any attention.

Debjeet Sarangi of Living Farms, which organized the Adivasi Food festival, says it is aimed at deepening the communitarian ethos of the adivasi society and the shared knowledge systems. The event will highlight their sustainable way of growing food and its relationship with their ecology – land, plants, animals and forests. 

When I asked him whether this exercise didn’t aim at romanticizing the foregone, his response was curt: “That’s where we fault. These people are in complete harmony with their nature. Instead of brushing them as uncivilized, we have to learn from them. Whether we like it or not, the future of the humanity is hidden in these tribal cultures.”

I decided to take a walk to see the range of cooked foods displayed. At the entrance to the event itself participants were served a nutritious welcome drink. Made from ragi millet (right) with a sprinkling of rice grains, the drink was certainly very tasty. Called Mandia jau in the local language, it is actually a ragi gruel. Says Salome Yesudas, a nutritionist from Chennai, “I don’t know why people need to drink colas and other kinds of sodas when you have such healthy drinks available.” Considering that the sale of colas has been on a decline, it will be certainly helpful if someone was to promote Mandia jau. The next time you visit my house, be prepared to taste this exotic drink.

I was at first a little apprehensive at tasting the cooked food displayed. More so, considering that I am a diabetic. But when Salome Yesudas explained to me how most of these food dishes were based on different kinds of millets which are the preferred food for people suffering from lifestyle diseases, I couldn’t control dipping my fingers. Pancakes were made from finger millet (left), foxtail millet, with a little jaggery; cakes from ragi and sesame, and then there were cooked dishes using sorghum, pearl millet, kodo millet, barnyard millet, red rice and with sprinklings of uncultivated fruits and seeds.

Living Farms is now documenting the food recipes and has prepared a nutrition chart detailing the nutrition composition of uncultivated plants. They have also printed posters in English and Oriya on the vast varieties of foods available for a balanced diet, as well as for the summer and winter seasons.

Although the Adivasi Food Festival at Munda was not the first traditional festivals of food that I had visited but what makes me feel encouraged is the efforts being made by some civil society groups to bring back the lost traditions, including the culinary habits.

It also clearly demonstrates that what India needs is not a centralized food security system but a multi-layered decentralized food security system based on the traditional practices in that particular region. Instead of providing the tribal populations with a monthly entitlement of 5 kg of wheat/rice/millets, the focus should be on strengthening the existing food system.

This is only possible if we are able to inculcate a feeling of pride in our traditional systems. The richness of our food culture, which is so intricately linked to the preservation of natural resources, is where it can all begin. I don’t know why our agricultural universities don’t talk about it; I don’t know why our food magazines and food shows never focus on the traditional foods; and I am certainly not surprised why our Planning Commission has no idea as to what the tribal cultures imbibe.

A culinary event organised by a group of Adivasi women in Bhadrachalam on the occasion of World Adivasi Day on Friday highlighted the traditional food habits of Adivasis and their nutrient-rich native food systems.

The unique event held on Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA) office premises here saw the organisers dishing out a variety of traditional foods, including snacks made from locally-sourced vegetables, millets, tubers and roots. The visitors had a rare opportunity to savour an array of delicious tribal delicacies made by Adivasi women at the event.

The ITDA Project Officer, V.P. Gautham, visited the stalls and lauded the Adivasi women for displaying their knowledge of the indigenous food systems.

Nutritive value

Speaking on the occasion, he said the traditional tribal cuisine is known for its nutritive value.

The dishes prepared by the Adivasis from the native vegetables, tubers, roots and edible plants are free from harmful pesticide residue, he noted. He called for sustained efforts to preserve the native tribal culinary traditions for posterity.

Earlier in the day, Adivasis took out a huge rally in Bhadrachalam, the tribal heartland of Telangana, in connection with the World Adivasi Day. Tribal artistes led the rally and grabbed the attention of the passersby by performing Kommu Koya, the famous dance of Koya tribal community.

Mr. Gautham and a host of leaders from various Adivasi organisations took part in the rally.

They garlanded the statues of the tribal freedom fighters Komaram Bheem, Gantam Dora, Alluri Sitarama Raju and Mallu Dora in the temple town.

Several rallies and meetings were also organised by various Adivasi organisations here to mark the occasion in various other parts of the tribal-dominated district and also in the Khammam district.

Current generation not keen on indigenous grains; aboriginals giving up cultivation of heirloom varieties of food grain

Adivasis of former composite Adilabad district are slowly moving away from their roots, and how. The current generation children, especially students of residential-type institutions, have developed intolerance towards food made out of indigenous grains invariably grown organically.

This phenomenon will eventually result in the aboriginal people completely giving up cultivation of their heirloom varieties of food grain which, according to nutritionists, are the best in terms of nutrition. “What is the use of growing these crops when there is no one to consume,” lamented Thodasam Hanmanth Rao, the Raj Gond tribe patel or headman of Pullara village in Kumram Bheem Asifabad district, as he talked of the changing trends in food consumption among ethnic tribes.

Adivasis used to grow different kinds of millets, the flagship variety being the persa jonna or big jowar and three varieties of rice besides a few types of vegetables as part of backyard farming. Elders swear that introduction of subsidised rice in the public distribution system (PDS) in the 1980s made the indigenous varieties seem irrelevant.

“Officials concerned told us to move away from cultivating our types of rice which, they emphasised, were of inferior quality owing to low yields and going by their ‘rough’ look,” the patel recalled the events in the 1980s when the Adivasis suffered some kind of inferiority complex growing their own crops. “The authorities compared the economic value of our crops with cotton to substantiate their contention,” he added.

“The local varieties of food grains have almost completely vanished from our kitchens and our children have grown up eating the subsidised rice supplied by the government,” pointed out Kanaka Lingubai while talking of the alienation of children from the organically grown grains. “We get stomach ache on eating the ragal perek or red rice,” observed Thodasam Anuradha, a Class XI student of Rasimetta Tribal Welfare Ashram School in the same mandal, as he summed up the intolerance for desi food among ethnic children.

The Adivasis now cultivate a few varieties of millets, sesamum and rice only to be used during religious rituals. “We are also on the verge of losing persa jonna,” rued Marsakolla Gagru, another farmer. That’s much food for thought to policy makers and agri-experts.