The greatest joy of writing is reading, and of all the books I have read, few are as memorable as the Mahabharata. It tells the wonderful story of a king who has lost everything – his wife, his kingdom and his identity – but not his skill. Disguised as a servant, Nala becomes such a skilled cook and charioteer that another king asks him to share his knowledge of the art and science of cooking.
Nala’s answer is one of the oldest cookery books in India: Paka Darpanam (literally, Mirror/Reflections on Cooking). This philosophical and practical book contains verses on how rice should and should not be cooked. Nala warns against eight vices, including over-boiling, burning, and using stale or out-of-season rice.
To cook the grains thoroughly, he says, choose unmilled, dry rice; Wash it in hot water, dip it in three times more water and let it boil while stirring continuously. Sprinkle milk, buttermilk or water on top, take it off the heat for a while, then boil it again until the grains become soft. Their promise is that the result is nourishing and promotes longevity.
Rice is included in the diet throughout India and is celebrated at every festival, whether in the form of rice beer during the Wangala festival of the Garos of Meghalaya or boiled with jaggery and milk at Pongal to thank the Sun God for a bountiful harvest.
On a more regular basis, South Indians once drank neeragram, a traditional beverage made from leftover rice fermented in water, valued for its gut-friendliness.
The roots of this crop run deep into our history. At Adichanallur, huge red burial urns, large enough to hold a single person, were found containing traces of rice and millet husks dating back to 200 BC. 1400 BC, as Arun Raj of the Archaeological Survey of India once told me. Traces have been found at many Harappan sites. The work of archaeo-botanist Dorian Fuller suggests that Oryza sativa indica may have been domesticated more than once. But the oldest evidence so far comes from excavations around Lahuradeva Lake in Uttar Pradesh, where burnt grains have been dated to 6409 BC.
Rice pervades the spoken and written word: the Atharva Veda describes how wine is made from it, while the Sangam poets pepper their verses with it – puffed, beaten, withered or scented. In one poem, a woman mourning her lover’s departure tells her friend that grief will ruin the beauty of her forehead, like the tableau of swans once sleeping in long, red paddy fields. In another poem, addressed to an owl, a sleepy lover promises her a meal of white rice cooked in ghee with goat and white rat meat provided she will stop her hooting and let him rest while she waits for her lover to return.
This grain – pink, red, black, white, cream and a variety of colors in between – reflects regional history, diet and climate. Indian agronomist RH Richharia wrote: Varieties that can thrive in water up to 14 feet (such as HBJ-Aman 3 from Assam); The husk of Musakhan of Punjab, resistant to adverse climate and fragrant when cooked, is liked by cattle; Odisha’s aromatic Badshabhog and easily digestible Dadhkhana. Until a few decades ago, India boasted thousands of varieties, each suited to the climate of its region.
But our quest for food freedom, a necessary goal, drove away the variations. Could we save thousands of varieties? Perhaps. Should we do it? Absolutely. Because, apart from their importance for regional identity, such a rich genetic resource should never be thoughtlessly discarded.
Then, as its diversity declined, rice began to invade new geographic areas.
Take Punjab. In 1966–67, rice occupied less than 7% of its fields; Today, it covers 64% of the state’s geographical area. This change is of national consequence. Punjab now produces about 10% of India’s rice but dominates government procurement. The government purchases more grains from the state than other states with much higher yields like West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, thanks to Punjab’s world-class market infrastructure. The procurement is also more than the actual production of the state, as grains from neighboring states are sold there. States encourage it and earn thousands of crores of rupees in taxes.
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But there is a problem of excess.
In July this year, a few months before the harvest, Punjab’s grain warehouses were still filled with last year’s wheat and rice. Farmers in Punjab are now reportedly struggling as there is not enough space to store their crops.
It’s a national problem: In July, there were 37.5 million tonnes of rice in warehouses across the country, the highest level in 20 years and three times more than the required buffer stock. October also saw excess grain in storage. This prompted the government to make ethanol to sell it cheaply. But making ethanol from rice is extremely inefficient. Making one liter of rice-ethanol takes 83% more water than making one liter of ethanol from sugarcane, which is no water hero in itself.
The northwest of India is dry. Most of Punjab receives between 400 mm and 600 mm of rainfall per year; The ocean of green I saw when I was traveling across the state during the Kharif season was very little. This deficiency is fulfilled by the groundwater of the area. Since the local population traditionally does not eat much rice, much of this groundwater flows to other parts of India, draining into the Paddy – a virtual groundwater river that carries more than 14 billion cubic meters per year; This is enough to meet the needs of India’s six largest cities for more than two years.
While normal rivers deliver water from water-rich areas to water-scarce areas, this one, the offspring of policies that have outlived their usefulness, does the opposite: It eliminates vital climate insurance in one of India’s driest regions.
This is stupidity on an extremely dangerous scale. This reflects a deep disconnect.
Why does the grain keep flowing?
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Farmers told me they are attracted to rice because it is easy to grow and it offers a secure market: they do not have to worry about whether the crop will sell, or what price it will fetch. This ease is enhanced by the research, hand-holding and state machinery readily available for this crop.
Meanwhile, Indians are diversifying their diets and reducing their reliance on grains.
Even the poorest Indians, who depend most on grains like rice and wheat for their calories, are falling away. Their daily protein intake from grains has fallen from about 90% in the early 1970s to about 50% today. Wealthy Indians rely little on grains, getting only 30% of their protein from this food group.
Subsidized grains remain a lifeline for the poorest, providing half their calorie needs for only 5% of their monthly expenses. But every year in an attempt to squeeze two such crops, rice and wheat, into the same field, farmers start burning paddy stubble left by labour-saving machinery. It is a major contributor to winter haze in the north, especially when the changing seasonal climate still blocks the winds that once dispelled it.
Recently while passing through Bundelkhand, another arid region prey to the fatal attraction of rice and wheat, I saw farmers setting fire to their fields and destroying their soil in the process. Did they care? Perhaps. But the temptation of ready purchases and cash was too hard to resist.
Food has also changed. The hotel where we stayed served us a sumptuous Bundelkhand thali, which consisted of rice and millet rotis. When I asked a local if this was customary, he replied that it was not, but that rice was added because “people expect it”.
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The impacts of climate change on rice are mixed in the tropics, especially when viewed in aggregate. But “by and large” offers little solace to the farmer whose fields have just been flooded.
Rice grown in place has become a climate villain, depleting groundwater and destroying the resilience of arid regions. Its flooded fields release methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide (at trapping heat over a 100-year period), resulting in rice alone accounting for more than 2% of India’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.
We are stuck in a self-destructive cycle that ignores all signs of stopping, be it rotting grains in storage, smoky skies in winter, huge budgetary allocations, dying soils, or rapidly depleting groundwater reserves.
I’ve been reading recently about the historical excesses of capitalism; About how slavery and drug trafficking once flourished under the guise of a free market. It’s a sobering reminder (if we needed it) that the uncontrolled pursuit of profit can be a dangerous thing.
And yet Rice’s story provides a counterpoint. This tells us that markets can offer solutions, if we let them work the right way. If we price water according to scarcity, make it more expensive in arid places and during dry seasons, pay farmers for soil carbon, and charge fair prices for electricity and fertilizer (replacing subsidies with direct cash payments to farmers), crop choices could automatically change (especially if procurement is improved).
There are also ways to improve rice cultivation. New technologies allow crops to be grown with much less water, and robust traditional varieties even command a premium in some markets. But these signals have weakened amid ready MSP, unlimited procurement and a mountain of subsidies.
something’s got to give. preferably before the water runs out.
(Mridula Ramesh is a climate-tech investor and author of The Climate Solution and Watersheds. She can be reached at tradeoffs@climateaction.net. Views expressed are personal)
