Urban Super Food vs. Rural Staple Food: (Re)discovering Ragi in Bangalore and South Karnataka
von Jasmin Lasslop
Abstract
I came across Ragi during my first exchange semester in Pune, India in 2017. Together with a friend, I was buying bread at a bakery nearby the campus when she pointed to the Ragi-Bread which was also available that day. While eating this bread with the specific nutty flavour, I did some research to find out what exactly this supposed healthy Ragi is. I got to know that Ragi – also called Finger Millet in English – is only one of many sorts of little millets that were and are grown in India, mostly in the Southern parts. Especially Ragi was and is a staple food in the South of the state of Karnataka. Mixed with salt and water and either cooked and formed to Ragi Balls/Ragi Mudde, or roasted on a pan as a flatbread called Ragi Rotti, Ragi ground into flour has been served as a regular starchy side dish for many Indian meals. After a period of almost replacing Ragi with Rice – mostly in richer parts of the population – today particularly its health benefits are appreciated by many parts of the population, also in the capital Bangalore. It has been declared as some kind of “Super Food” while at the same time, new Ragi-products and dishes are getting famous. I decided then to focus on this food development in Karnataka for my Master’s Thesis.Project Description
Throughout history, Ragi was very common on the Indian subcontinent, specifically in the Southern part which includes the today’s territory of the state of Karnataka. Its origin is thought to be in today Uganda where it also was and still is a staple food. Also it is thought that Ragi has already arrived in India between 1800 B.C. and 1390 B.C. by traffics on the land or on the sea.A good reason for its domestication in South India is that the state of Karnataka is the second-driest after Rajasthan. Ragi grows very fast and easy on different soils and needs less water than Rice. Actually, Ragi can grow within the practice of dryland farming where only regular rainfall is required. Another good reason for its uses is that it is very nutritious. It contains a lot of proteins, minerals and fiber which not only controls the cholesterol, but also keeps a long feeling of satiety. Concluding all these benefits, Ragi traditionally has mostly been described as a ”poor man’s food”.
This fact got strengthened some thousand years ago when new power systems based on Brahmanic assumptions got established. More work intensive and therefore expensive Rice has been playing an important role during divine rituals like pujas. This food trend got additionally supported during British colonial time when cheap rice got imported from Myanmar and became affordable for many people.
Nowadays, after Food and Nutrition Sciences have come up and have confirmed the mentioned health benefits of the now ”Super Food” Ragi over Rice, many people belonging to richer parts of the population and mainly people from the city of Bangalore itself are interested in including millets and especially Ragi into their diets. The benefits of growing Ragi in the region of South Karnataka are also supported by the Indian government, at whose proposal the United Nations have declared the year 2023 as the ”International Year of Millets”.
While I had to write a longer synopsis for the upcoming Master’s Thesis as an exam part for one of my classes at the CeMIS, and after attending a class about materiality of objects with Prof. Andrea Lauser, I got the idea of doing research from the perspective of the Ragi plant itself. Thus to what extent its appreciated agricultural and health benefits influence people with different social backgrounds and from villages as well as cities in South Karnataka, to consume Ragi, and in which kind of food preparations it is consumed.
Since I thought it would be necessary to include other sciences than only Social Sciences for a better understanding of the ingredients and the growing process of Ragi, I then decided to do another exchange semester, this time at the University of Agricultural Sciences Bangalore where I travelled in mid of February 2022 and from where I came back after 7 months in September 2022. There I took part in classes at the Department of Food Science and Nutrition and also at the Department of Agronomy where I did participant observation in planting and documenting a Ragi plant on one of the testing fields on the campus.
For completing my conducted ethnographic fieldwork, I did 5 semi-structured interviews with persons from Bangalore itself, and from places around, in the Southern parts of Karnataka. All interviews were done in English, except one, for which I got the help of one of my classmates with the local Kannada language.
About me
I am 26 years old and I have started studying in Göttingen with a Two-Subject-Bachelor in Ethnology and Modern Indian Studies in 2015. I have continued with these subjects in my Master’s by choosing the Combi-Master of Ethnology with Modern Indian Studies as a module package.I am very happy and grateful that after waiting for two years due to the worldwide COVID-pandemic, I was finally able to conduct my long planned fieldwork in and around Bangalore. I am interested in continuing research within this topic by doing a doctorate.
Summary of Findings
After a first analysis of my collected data, my preliminary findings are the following.Rice is still a widespread staple food, but particularly in the city of Bangalore where it is even more predominant. This Rice preference is additionally supported by a general spreading of many new restaurants, particularly with international dishes that are also competing with the traditional Ragi dishes. On the one hand, Ragi is very often consumed at the roadside by rickshaw drivers as a cheap, but nutritious and filling meal. On the other hand, I have discovered many restaurants with different price ranges where Ragi dishes and especially Ragi-Mudde is served. Similarly, I also found out about the practice of adding Ragi as an extra ingredient to other dishes and far and foremost about Ragi-Readymade-Products, promoted as allround “Super Food”, available in several shops in Bangalore which are very easy and fast to prepare. These products are quite cheap, but compared to plain Ragi grains or flour, they are slightly more expensive and therefore not affordable for all parts of the urban population.
This might also be the case in many parts of the population in rural areas around Bangalore where Ragi is anyway available in greater amounts because in contrast to the city, the majority of the population in Karnataka works in the agricultural sector or is at least connected with it. In rural areas, consuming Ragi forms an integral part of the local diet and therefore the new approved health benefits of it play only a secondary role. Anyhow, there is still potential for growing more Ragi than Rice for which the Indian government has decided to increase the price support for the yields.
Concluding my present findings, I will focus on the differences between the uses of Ragi in the urban region of Bangalore and the uses of Ragi in the rural region around in South Karnataka. Moreover, it is interesting to find out more about the role of UAS Bangalore which brings these different perspectives together.