Millets,Shifting Cultivation and the Adivasis: Looking Through Culture,Policy and Politics

Abstract

The year 2023 is celebrated as the International Year of Millets, declared by the United Nation’s General Assembly in March 2021 on the proposal submitted by the Government of India. Millet cultivation and consumption are being championed as the panacea for climate change and a solution for global hunger and nutrition. India’s lead in this connection is to make herself the global hub for millets. The Food and Agricultural Organisation of the UN recognise and promote millets as a pathway for sustainable development, enhancement of biodiversity and transformer of agrifood systems, besides empowering smallholder farmers and providing new sustainable market opportunities for the producers and consumers. However, the indigenous people of the globe or the Adivasis in India, who have predominantly cultivated and consumed millets primarily through the technology of shifting cultivation, find little mention or no mention in the context. The contemporary environment is ripe to revisit the intricacies of the closely knitted culture of the Adivasi and their shifting cultivation. The overarching challenges of climate change and sustainable development seem to compel the bringing back of the discarded ‘baby with the bath water’. The article will focus on the Konda Reddis (Andhra Pradesh state) and podu, their traditional way of cultivation (shifting cultivation). Podu is not an isolated cultivation technology, it is, for the Konda Reddis, the prism of their culture. Will the politics of policy resurrect the Adivasi and shifting cultivation?

Keywords

Millets adivasis shifting cultivation sustainable development climate change

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