How Middle India Changed the Way It Ate
Leela Choudhary examines how a young nation's burgeoning economy, the arrival of supermarkets, and the compelling rhetoric of television ads, brought about a tectonic shift in the country's diet.
Cold winters in the deserts of Rajasthan are as unforgiving as the sweltering summers. Nonetheless, after a tiring day in the fields, Gita, 20, finds comfort in ghee laden bajra rotis, made with grain from her family’s harvest. But for how long? Not long afer, Gita is on a train to Jaipur with her husband, towards a better future, with dreams of security against the agricultural uncertainties of the 70s. 30 years later, they have successfully made the switch from farming to textile business.
But in Jaipur, she still reminisces of homegrown bajra. Today, she buys bajra flour from a meticulous stack off the shelves of a supermarket. Adjacent from which, she also pulls out instant noodles for her 15-year-old, who compares the taste of bajra with sawdust. This could easily pass as for a generation difference in taste. But further observation reveals a difference of cultural choices, influenced by the socio, political, and economic factors. Gita’s hometown is not untouched by these factors either. A global diet of burgers, pizzas, and noodles, is no longer the aspirational privilege of the urban middle class. It also is the dream of rural India, sustained by global media.
A nationwide shift in diets did not take place overnight. While understanding the impact of globalisation on food supply-demand patterns in India, Prabhu Pingali of Food and Agriculture Organization, identified a ‘two-stage process of diet transformation.’ The first stage, ‘income-induced,’ moves preferences to superior forms of traditional staples, while the second stage of ‘diet globalisation,’ shapes local food habits to reflect global influence. A similar process was identified subsequent to India’s Green Revolution and globalisation.
Depleted after World War II, and drained of her resources, India’s unpredictable monsoon and inadequate agricultural infrastructure left her vulnerable to famines. Heavily dependent on the U.S. for supply of grains, India took the hard decision to get off the support. It embraced industrial inputs and the technology of high yielding seed varieties through the Green Revolution, especially wheat and rice, to increase food production and address starvation and malnutrition. But the accelerated production of wheat and rice (not to mention the heavy use of chemical fertilisers for seed productivity) reduced the supply of nutrient-rich pulses and millets in the market. The problem of food shortage, as Biplab Dasgupta, a former MP notes, was soon accompanied by the destructive effects of HYV, reflected in an imbalanced soil ecosystem, exploitative use of groundwater and imbalanced diet. It appeared the Green Revolution provided only transient relief to agricultural failure and displaced farmers, because increased production overlooked the indigenous framework of Indian agriculture and its structural inefficiencies. Vandana Shiva, an environmental activist, in her book The Violence of the Green Revolution, writes: The Green Revolution answered the problem of hunger and rural unrest with increased production, not with land reform or employment projects; essentially it offered technological solution to a social and political problem.
Despite this approach, the Green Revolution transformed the food production and distribution system in the country, fuelled by the political aspiration of ‘self-sufficiency for a better India.’ An aspiration bred by not just the nations’ infant leadership but also by the newly formed post-Independence middle class. This ‘emerging middle class’ adopted a sociological imagination of India, shaped by the idea of economic development. This however, was western-inspired economic motivation and not necessarily a nationalist one. “As foreign capital moved in to take advantage of lower labor costs, the outsourcing of jobs, particularly in the technology and services sector, was a boon for the middle class. Salaries rose, as did levels of conspicuous consumption,” says Sanjay Joshi, professor of History, Northern Arizona University. Owing to participative growth, consumption levels grew and the standard of living started to improve. A report, Future of Consumption in Fast Growth Consumer Markets: India, published in January 2019 by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Bain & Company mentions, ‘Nearly 80% of Indian households in 2030 will be middle-income…the middle class will drive 75% of consumer spending in 2030...they will spend 2-2.5x more on essential categories (food, beverages, apparel, personal care, gadgets, transport and housing).’ This estimation reflects an influential growth of the middle class in the country's economy.
The educated urban middle class, while challenging socio-cultural norms in pursuit of ‘a modern Indian life,’ had nothing to reference but the West. The identity of a ‘modern Indian’ has been constructed by the media and the Internet. Jeffrey Arnett, a professor of Psychology, identifies this phenomenon as dual identity: “Most people in the world now develop a bicultural identity, in which part of their identity is rooted in their local culture, while another part stems from the awareness of their relation to global culture.” These identities are developing in younger generations at a faster rate, and continue to do so through pop culture. Dietary choices are not independent of such associations. Some of the earliest introductions to global culture were through brands like Coca-Cola and Pepsi. In one Coca-Cola ad, Aishwarya Rai asks Aamir Khan how she will find him in a crowd. “Tumhari pehchan?” He replies, “I’ll carry a Coca-Cola!” The culture of a young, coke-drinking generation created by the rhetoric of identification of the ‘self,’ with an emerging social phenomenon of drinking soda — a practice alien to the local Indian culture. Galbraith, an economist, who holds a similar view, argued that “…individual tastes were not exogenous but learned and shaped by cultural, institutional, and socioeconomic processes, and by particular influences such as advertising.” The rhetoric used in marketing is influential, and a useful tool in introducing products in a new culture. Especially a product that the culture does not identify with.
Under a similar influence, convenient consumption emerged, contrary to the Indian culture of fresh food at every meal. In the book Asian Food: The Global and the Local, by Katarzyna Joanna Cwiertka, food practices of 200 urban Madras households were recorded and analysed. It revealed that during the 1970s, these households majorly ate ‘fresh and home cooked’ meals. The consumption of processed foods was minimum, until the emergence of supermarkets in 1994, which ‘contained a wide variety of processed food, some of it imported, such as Kellogg’s breakfast cereals and California seedless raisin.’ Breakfast substitutes, a welcome relief from the elaborate Indian breakfast recipes, became a hit. The supermarkets targeted working women who sought food that was easy to prepare. Ads were centred around women and kids portraying the product as an ideal mother’s choice. A most memorable ad is that of the instant noodles, Maggi. In the 1985 ad, a mother asks her hungry child for just two minutes. And as she gets to work in the kitchen, the background chorus goes, “Meri mummy sabse best, Maggi is the tastiest.” The tagline of the product was, ‘Fast to cook! Good to eat!’ Rhetoric establishes a benchmark for ideal action, and in this case, it offers an instant plan of action for a mother, whose children ask for food at an odd hour. It created a distinct behavioural shift through catering to developing imaginations, needs, and tastes.
Supermarkets marked a turning point in the way people sourced their foods. The act of visiting a supermarket, a western concept, turned into a ‘leisure activity,’ where homemakers felt the need to ‘dress up.’ This is a new and undeniably elite concept, because only an urban population can participate. But the absence of this form of consumerism does not mean rural culture is untouched.
For the rural population, consumption aspirations do not require inspiration from the west. To some, immediate urban access is influential. Data from ORG-MARG shows that rural consumption has moved from necessities to lifestyle-oriented products like toothpaste, detergent, TV, radio, etc. The same is true of rural diets. Tata-Cornell institute of agriculture and nutrition director Prabhu Pingali, remarks on his blog, that in a village near Melghat hills, children purchase cheese balls and potato chips from small stores, which also sells other processed foods uncharacteristic to local diets. Such a drastic shift, both urban and rural, can be detrimental to a population’s health and nutrition. But also, the sanctity of traditional food practices, so inherent and representative of culture, while not necessarily threatened, does not flourish with the same rigor. While the Green Revolution politically changed our food production and distribution systems, globalisation drove us to a culturally new diet.
To a generation that prefers California almonds over Kashmiri varieties, it becomes important to question if our tastes and preferences have succumbed to cultural and economic changes. Vandana Shiva, author of the book The Violence of Green Revolution, believes the changes in taste is a ‘cultural issue,’ against the rise of a hegemonic western culture. She fights to bring back the traditional grains and foods, essential to both individual and ecological health. A similar discourse has led to initiatives at the level of both production and consumption. The Orissa’s millet mission is making millets accessible, and spreading awareness on their nutritional benefits, to create a shift in demand. On the other hand, the chemical-free movement, though focusing on sustainable practices, has transformed the organic movement into an industry which only few can access. However, outside dictative market forces, the journey back to indigenous practices means we have to imagine an accommodative way forward. One that makes space for our discerning global palates, with a foundation in regional and local wisdom. One way to do this is to study the abundant culinary possibilities that India’s pluralism holds, and to incorporate them to the best of our capabilities.
Leela Choudhary is a liberal arts student and Young India fellow at Ashoka University.
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