North-East goes big on millets

Organisations across the North-East are working to revive millet cultivation and consumption

- Abhilasha Ojha

Over the past few years, the North-East has been seeing a silent but determined movement to promote local millets, such as foxtail, sorghum and pearl, and revive some that had virtually gone extinct. Millet raishan, for instance, used to be a staple food in Nongtraw, in Meghalaya's Khasi Hills, until the early 1970s. "It was our rice," remembers Pius Ranee, executive director of the Meghalaya-based North East Slow Food and Agrobiodiversity Society (Nesfas)even used in soups, breads, biscuits and local beer. Job's tears, megaru in Garo and sohriew in Khasi, too had given way to rice and wheat.