Zipping up the food chain

In the mid ’80s I was asked by the boss to organise an agro-climatic planning exercise. The country was divided into many zones and I personally went to meet the teams that were set up. They were farmers’ representatives, bankers, scientists and agro economists. They were very excited at being “involved” by the Planning Commission, for they all knew what is to be done by the state capital and Delhi. But the agricultural universities which led the exercises were all located away from state capitals and in many cases also the cities. I learnt a lot about my country and developed a wanderlust for villages that never left me. But the other great part was the food I got. It was divine.

A few years before that, I taught a management policy course with a young colleague who is now a great management guru. He was an upper caste man from Tamil Nadu and invited me to dinner. His mother was old fashioned and we sat on a chowki which was washed with cow dung. The food was really for the gods. Never again was Tamil food only the dosai and idli to me. If you have tasted rasam made with freshly ground spice and that magic which comes with dishes made with jaggery and coconut milk, you will never be the same again. You will never again cross a great temple or for that matter a good Tamil caste lodge without that envy of the lucky ones within.

But this is true for each part of India. The food is great in Pusa in Bihar, in Barabanki and Pant Nagar, at Solan, in Jorhat, in Rahuri, Anand, in Ludhiana, at Itanagar, I could go on and on. It is also now coming out of the woodwork. Even in a town which is graduating from a district place to a metropolis like Ahme – dabad, you are beginning to distinguish between Malayali, Telugu and Ta – mil food. You can buy all of it and it is not always the best but it is in many cases very good. It is also happening in the diaspora. Even in small town America, of the many “Indian” restaurants, some are good.

The Planning Commission reportedly says that diversification is slower in the current Plan. Are we thinking of pushing and helping those whose business it is to take all the good things that come from agriculture and make a good Indian meal of it? A Marxist MP from Kerala, a good friend, is a vegetarian and when I asked him the reasons, since they obviously would not be religious, he said that Kerala has so many spices, nuts, vegetables, that he did not see the reason to eat meat. Of course, the Malayali fish has much to recommend it but if you have tasted the effects of cocum, curry patta, coconut and all else, it is not difficult to see his point of view. And even with regard to good meat, remember the great Charawak scripts wrote many millennia ago that juicy meat comes from dry areas. In fact, diversification of food will help the poorest areas by producing more of what they grow and we need.

I am told that we are planning international investment in retail trade and the globalisation of our food supplies may not be far behind. I hope the policy makers who think all this through will also pay some attention to a point the Entrepreneurship Institute of India has been making: that it is also important in such areas to build on your own strengths. We are an old culture and in areas like food we have great strengths. Somebody should do what is euphemistically called “supply chain management” to prepare for the great changes we are planning and take advantage of our strengths. While we are doing it we must also keep the world in view. For starters we could let it be known that fusion of Indian cooking with the west does not mean adding on a mango chutney to an Atlantic salmon. The Charawak school was very clear on the spices that go with meats and fish and we must experiment, not brutalise. The future is bright if we have the strategies.