The world’s worst recorded food disaster occurred in 1943. It is estimated that during the so-called Bengal Famine between 5 and 6 million people died of hunger and related diseases in eastern India. At first the famine was attributed to a shortfall in food production, but later the economist and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen (who experienced the famine as a child) concluded that it was ‘man-made’, caused by government mismanagement and hoarding, and by a decline in real income, especially in rural areas.
After India gained its independence in 1947, food security was a priority of the new government. At the time 72 per cent of the population lived in rural areas. The first governments followed to some degree the Soviet model, based on central planning, the development of heavy industry and the centralization of food distribution, although farming remained in the private sector. Because agricultural production could not keep up with demand, India was a net importer of food throughout the 1950s.
Starting around 1950, a ‘white revolution’ was launched in dairy farming, called ‘Operation Flood’. A network of village milk producers’ cooperatives made modern technology and management techniques available to its members with a view to increasing milk production, enhancing rural income by eliminating middlemen, and ensuring fair prices for consumers. Today India is the world’s largest milk producer (having surpassed the United States in 1998). More than 10 million farmers produce more than 20 million litres (42 million pints) of milk a day.
The subsequent ‘green revolution’ transformed India from an importer of food into one of the world’s leading agricultural producers. Over the period 1966–77, programmes were implemented to expand farming areas and consolidate holdings; to promote double cropping; to open agricultural colleges based on the American land-grant model; to increase the use of fertilizer and insecticide; to expand irrigation; and to develop and use high-yielding varieties of seed, especially wheat and rice. By 1978 per-acre production had increased by 30 per cent.
Agriculture has continued to grow. Between 1961 and 2009 the production of wheat rose from 11 million tonnes to 80 million tonnes, while individual daily consumption increased sevenfold to about 58 kg (128 lb) per person per year. The consumption of millet and sorghum declined to a third of its initial level by the end of that period, but individual consumption of fruit, vegetables, milk and spices nearly doubled. Animal products still account for only about 9 per cent of a person’s average daily consumption, compared with 28 per cent in the United States. The poultry sector has grown by an average of 10 per cent per year over the past decade, reflecting integrated farming methods and the use of hybrid varieties of chicken. Egg production has also risen dramatically, as has the consumption of ghee, which has nearly tripled since 1990.
At the same time, the number of poor people in India has risen in absolute terms. According to the World Bank, in 2010 around a third of India’s population lived below the international poverty line income of u.s.$1.25 a day, while two-thirds lived on less than $2 a day. The poorest states are Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh (all three of which have large tribal populations), and Uttar Pradesh. In recent years there have been reports that Indian farmers, burdened by low yields and debt, have been committing suicide at a rate much higher than the general population, especially in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.1
India also ranks near the bottom on the Global Hunger Index developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute, notably in the proportion of underweight children under the age of five (43.5 per cent).2 Although India’s score has improved since 1990, the figure has not kept pace with its economic growth. People are malnourished not so much because of insufficient food production but because of waste and poorly managed storage and distribution.3 Less than half of the grain picked up from government warehouses reaches Indian homes. As a consequence, the diet of the very poor is little different from what it was thousands of years ago: in the north, a chapatti made of flour and water with a little pickle and vegetable and, for the slightly more affluent, dal; in the south, rice with pickle and sambhar; in the west, sattu, dried lentils with a chilli on the side. In July 2013 the government passed the National Food Security Bill in an attempt to eliminate hunger and malnutrition. It guarantees a subsidized allowance of 5 kg (11 lb) of grain each month very cheaply (for between 1 and 3 rupees, or 2–4 cents, per kg) to households that comprise half of the urban poor and 75 per cent of the rural population, and an additional allowance to extremely poor households.
To date, the only genetically modified (GM) crop grown in India is cotton, starting in 2002. In 2009 the government tried to introduce a GM aubergine, called Bt Brinjal, which carried a gene that made it resistant to insect attack, but when concerns were raised over its safety for animal and human consumption, the government imposed an indefinite moratorium on its cultivation. A panel of experts appointed by the Supreme Court recommended that all field trials of GM crops be halted for ten years. In May 2013 the National Biodiversity Authority of India (NBA) sued the biotechnology corporation responsible for Bt Brinjal, Monsanto, on the grounds that it had used local varieties of aubergine in developing the GM crop ‘without prior approval of the competent authorities’ or the consent of the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have cultivated these varieties for generations.
In 2009 India passed a law deeming all traditional medicinal herbs (as well as yoga postures) to be part of the nation’s cultural heritage and therefore ‘public property’, and prohibited anyone from patenting them. The most prominent opponent of GM foods has been the ecologist Vandana Shiva. Her organization Navdanya, founded in 1987, focuses on ‘conserving the biodiversity of our crops, promoting organic and nonviolent farming, revalorizing indigenous food and food culture while preserving livelihoods’.4
In 1991, faced with a balance of payments crisis, the Indian government decided to liberalize and globalize the country’s economy. It opened India to international trade and investment, deregulated and privatized some sectors of the economy, and took control of inflation. Foreign capital poured in, exports and industrial production grew, inflation fell and the stock market boomed, and by 2007 India’s GDP was growing at a rate of 9 per cent, leading the press to talk of India’s economic miracle. (The growth rate has slowed somewhat since then.)
Since then, urbanization has increased (the proportion of Indians living in cities rose from 18 per cent in 1961 to 32 per cent in 2011) and an Indian ‘middle class’ has emerged, a subject much discussed in the media and by think tanks.5 The definition of the middle class is problematic. The Indian government has defined it as consisting of two groups: ‘seekers’, who have a daily income equivalent to u.s.$8–$20 per person, and ‘strivers’, with a daily income of $20–$40. Using this definition, the Indian middle class represented nearly 13 per cent of all households in 2009–10, or 153 million people. Other estimates are lower, placing it at 75 million people, 60 per cent of whom live in urban areas. Some academics propose an even broader definition: a mindset in which people are optimistic about social and economic upward mobility for their children or a reasonable assurance of a steady income. A subset of this middle class are young Indian consumers with jobs in call centres, IT companies, international banks and consultancies, who are earning salaries beyond their parents’ wildest dreams. Whatever the definition or the numbers involved, there is no doubt that such a class exists and that their affluence has led to changes in Indian eating patterns.
One of these changes is an increase in the consumption of meat, especially chicken. As noted earlier, only a minority of Indians are strictly vegetarian. Data is scanty, but a survey conducted in 2006 found that just 21 per cent of all households were entirely vegetarian.6 Thirty-four per cent of Indian women are vegetarian, compared with 28 per cent of men, as are 37 per cent of people over the age of 55, compared with 29 per cent of people under the age of 25. Rather surprising is the fact that 3 per cent of Indian Muslims report themselves as vegetarians, as do 8 per cent of Christians, perhaps indicating how deeply rooted the vegetarian ethos is in Indian society.
Individual families may contain both vegetarians and meat-eaters, although those family members who eat meat often do so outside the home. The anthropologist R. S. Khare, who studied food habits within certain brahmin households in Uttar Pradesh, observed that an older orthodox person who initially ate only with members of his own caste might at some point start eating food outside the home, when travelling, if not in restaurants then in a vaishnav bhojanalaya (a North Indian establishment that serves vegetarian food prepared according to orthodox standards).7 The next step might be to eat in a coffee shop or a sweetshop, places that are also vegetarian but where the caste or even religion of the cooks might be unknown.
The principle of ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ seems to prevail in such situations. Eating in a restaurant would be the final stage of departing from orthodoxy. Khare wrote: ‘A modern restaurant represents a total refutation of the entire orthodox culinary and jati commensal rules that the tradition inculcates at the level of the domestic hearth. It is a clear opposition of principles.’8
Until modern times, India did not have a tradition of public dining or a culture of restaurants (that is, places where diners could eat in relative comfort or luxury, choosing dishes from an extensive menu).9 The norms of social life and the complex dietary prescriptions of the various law codes discouraged dining out. For most households, the only exceptions were festivals, wedding dinners, caste feasts and temples.
Enjoying a morning snack at a streetside stand in Kolkata.
Nevertheless, since ancient times there have been taverns, public inns and shops that served cooked meat, snacks and sweets for travellers, students and, no doubt, housewives who did not feel like cooking. This tradition lives on in India’s rich and vibrant street-food culture. An estimated 10 million people work in the street-food sector in India, including 300,000 vendors in Delhi and 130,000 vendors in Kolkata alone. Street food, which is often vegetarian, is usually made to order and eaten on the spot, since in a hot climate it is not safe to eat dishes that have been standing. Every city and region in India has its own special street foods: bhelpuri in Mumbai, kathi kebabs in Kolkata and chaat in northern India, for example. As transportation and communication improve and people move elsewhere in search of jobs, many of these foods have become universal.10
Food safety is a problem, because many vendors have no access to clean water or disposal facilities, and often cook and handle food with dirty hands. In 2007 the Delhi city government tried to ban the preparation of food at street stands, a move supported by India’s High Court, but the order proved unenforceable and has not been implemented. Now street food is starting to move off the street, as it has done in countries like Malaysia and Singapore where government authorities have set up street-food courts with proper sanitation. Chains like Jumbo King in Mumbai and the Great Kabab Factory in various cities offer sanitized versions of traditional dishes, and street-food courts are being installed in modern urban shopping centres.
A modern dhaba on the roadside near New Delhi.
A unique Mumbai institution are the dabbawallas, or tiffin-box carriers, who pick up freshly made meals in lunchboxes from office workers’ homes, usually by bicycle, deliver them to their workplaces by lunchtime, and return the boxes later in the day. The boxes are first delivered to a local railway station, where they are colour-coded, then delivered to other stations in Mumbai, re-sorted and carried to their destinations. Each day between 4,500 and 5,000 dabbawallas deliver between 175,000 and 200,000 boxes for a small fee, and their punctuality and reliability are legendary. Today text messaging is sometimes used for booking.
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Mumbai’s dabbawallas pick up freshly made meals in lunch boxes from office workers’ homes and deliver them to their workplaces by lunch time.
Chicken Kiev at Kolkata’s famous Mocambor restaurant, which has served Continental food since the 1950s. |
Another descendant of the old food stalls are the dhabas – small wayside stands located on main roads, typically serving five or six dishes in large brass pots. Many also serve cups of a thick, milky tea sometimes called nabbe mil chai (‘90 miles tea’) in Hindi, signifying a beverage so strong that it will keep a lorry driver going for 90 miles. The first patrons of such stands were lorry drivers, but dhaba food has become fashionable among young urban Indians, and some have even gone upscale by adding walls, air-conditioning, tables and chairs, and printed menus.
In the south, travellers and people living away from home can take their meals at military hotels, which serve meat and egg dishes, or Udupi hotels (see chapter Five), which offer only vegetarian fare.11 In an interesting twist, New York City now has several restaurants serving kosher south Indian food.
Western-style restaurants came to India in the late nineteenth century, not long after they appeared in Britain. In about 1890 Federico Peliti, an Italian confectioner, opened his eponymous restaurant in Calcutta, and it became a favourite lunch spot for the city’s business community. After the First World War the Swiss Angelo Firpo opened Firpo’s on Chowringhee, Calcutta’s main street. The menus of these restaurants consisted mainly of Western-style dishes, plus a few quasi-Indian dishes such as mulligatawny soup and curry. Flury’s, a famous pastry shop on Park Street, opened in 1927 and is still thriving. Their counterparts in Bombay were Monginis, owned by Italian caterers; the Wayside, which described itself as a ‘pleasing English Inn, which is quiet and exclusive’; and Gourdon & Company, serving Continental food.12 The patrons of these establishments were Europeans or members of the anglicized Indian elite.
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Kolkata, once home to more than 80,000 mainly Hakka Chinese, also had a thriving Chinese restaurant culture, which still lives on in the city’s Chinatown, Tengra. In recent years, an Indo-Chinese hybrid cuisine has become one of India’s most popular restaurant foods, characterized by the use of hot red sauces and featuring such dishes as chicken corn soup; Mongolian chicken, lamb or panir; and chilli chicken.
Restaurants serving high-quality Indian food in a pleasant family-friendly setting came relatively late to India. The progenitor was Moti Mahal, which opened near the Red Fort in New Delhi in 1947. Its founder, Kundan Lal Gujral, was the virtual creator of the tandoori style of cuisine that has become a hallmark of Indian restaurants worldwide.
The Inventor of Tandoori Chicken
Today, tandoori chicken, butter chicken and tandoori roti are staples of Indian restaurants around the world, but until the mid-twentieth century they were virtually unknown, even on the Indian subcontinent. They are the creation of one of India’s most dynamic and innovative restaurateurs, Kundan Lal Gujral, the founder of India’s most famous restaurant, Moti Mahal in Delhi.
Kundan Lal was born near Peshawar in the Northwest Frontier province of British India, a Hindu of Punjabi and Pathan origin. As a child he worked in Peshawar in a small catering shop that eventually became a restaurant called Moti Mahal (Pearl Palace). It specialized in kebabs baked in a tandoor, a large clay oven buried in the ground, accompanied by naan.
When India was partitioned in 1947, Kundan Lal and his family ended up in the Indian capital, Delhi, where he set up a small roadside café on Daryaganj near the Red Fort. He named it Moti Mahal, and found a tandoor-maker (a fellow refugee) who experimented with different designs until he came up with an above-ground version that would work in a restaurant kitchen.
To make the bland food of his region more palatable to Indian taste, Kundan Lal tried different spice mixtures until he settled on the blend that is still used in the restaurant today. Its secret recipe is said to contain ground coriander seeds, black pepper and a mild red pepper that gives tandoori chicken its characteristic red colour. Pieces of chicken and even whole chickens were marinated in this mixture and yoghurt, and roasted in the tandoor. To please palates used to richer sauces (and, some claim, to use up leftover tandoori chicken), he created butter chicken: pieces of roast chicken cooked in a sauce of tomato, cream and butter. Another Moti Mahal speciality was dal makhani, black lentils cooked slowly overnight and mixed with tomatoes, butter and fresh cream. Kundan Lal also served the breads of his region, including long, thick naans and Peshwari naan, filled with nuts and raisins.
Tandoori chicken was created by Kundan Lal, a refugee from Peshawar, in the late 1940s. |
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In the tradition of many great restaurateurs, Kundan Lal was a consummate showman, easily identified by his lambswool fez, curled moustache and courtly manners. The restaurant became a favourite of many politicians, including India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and his daughter Indira Gandhi, who as prime minister took many visiting VIPS there. An Indian official once told the visiting shah of Iran that coming to Delhi without eating at Moti Mahal would be like visiting Agra without seeing the Taj Mahal. The restaurant catered for many important events, including a state dinner for the visiting American First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and the wedding reception of Nehru’s grandson Sanjay Gandhi.
Kundan Lal opened branches in Delhi and Moosoorie, but remained a fixture at his original restaurant until the end of his days. His grandson Monish, who studied restaurant management, launched a company called Tandoori Trail, which now has more than 90 franchises acress India. Today Moti Mahal has countless imitators in India and throughout the world; and, in one of the ironies of gastronomical history, tandoori chicken is regarded as the quintessential Indian dish.13
Millet: From Despised Grain to Nutri-Cereal
Millet (a category that includes sorghum as well as finger, foxtail, proso, little, kodo and barnyard millets) is among the world’s oldest crops, and in ancient times was the main staple in China and South India. Although India remains the world’s largest producer of millet, today it is used mainly as lifestock fodder. Since the 1960s some 44 per cent of land once cultivated with millet has been lost. One reason for the grain’s decline in popularity is that it is not as soft as wheat, takes longer to cook and needs to be cooked and consumed while fresh. Moreover, millet was traditionally the food of poorer people and the lower classes, while eating rice and wheat came to be identified with higher social status.
Millet has recently been making a comeback, however. The Millet Network of India, an alliance of institutions, farmers, nutritionists and food activists, is promoting the revival of millet, citing its environmental and nutritional benefits. For example, millets have much higher fibre, protein, mineral and calcium content than rice.
On World Heart Day, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics called for India to prioritize a return to sorghum- and millet-based farming to help deal with rising lifestyle diseases. Millet is becoming fashionable among urban foodies in India and abroad because of its health benefits and perhaps a longing for ‘authenticity’.
Information from the Millet Network of India, Deccan Development Society, Millets: Future of Food and Farming: www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/millets.pdf (accessed May 2014)
Many of the refugees who came to New Delhi in 1947 were Punjabis, who set up small businesses, including food stalls that did not require a lot of capital. Some expanded into small neighbourhood restaurants and eventually into more sophisticated establishments. The restaurant chains Kwality’s and Gaylord’s are well-known examples. Gaylord’s originally served Western and Chinese food and later expanded their menus to include Indian dishes. A mainstay of their menus was Punjabi food with touches of South Indian and so-called Mughlai cuisine. This style of cooking was taught at the catering colleges set up by the Indian government in the 1960s. As the graduates moved into the workforce, they introduced it into five-star hotels, which in the 1970s and ’80s became centres of dining and social activity for newly affluent city-dwellers.
Another important landmark was Karim’s in Old Delhi, opened in 1913 by Haji Karimuddin, a descendant of cooks who worked for the Mughal emperors. Today the fourth generation of his family operates the restaurant, which has several branches. The founder’s goal, which is stated on the menu, was ‘to bring the Royal Food to the common man’. The menu features North Indian Muslim dishes such as biryani, kebabs, haleem, nihari and brain curry.
The past two decades have seen a proliferation of restaurants serving Western food, not just in major cities but also in smaller towns. Thai and Italian food, which offer many vegetarian options, are especially popular. American fast-food chains such as KFC (since 1995), McDonald’s and Pizza Hut (both since 1996) and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (since 2013) serve dishes adapted to local tastes and habits. Instead of beef, menus feature such items as the Chicken Maharaja-Mac™, the McVeggie™ and the Veg Twister™. Indian companies followed suit by offering Indian fast foods. Takeaway meals, virtually unheard of in the early twenty-first century, have become very popular.
Until recently, few restaurants served regional dishes other than South Indian. Five-star hotel chains, notably ITC Hotels and Taj Hotels, were leaders in reviving and promoting regional cuisine. In 1977 ITC hired Imtiaz Qureshi, a chef and caterer from Lucknow, to upgrade their restaurants. He opened Bukhara, specializing in tandoori and Northwest Frontier dishes, and Dum Pukht, featuring traditional Lucknow specialities, both in the Maurya Sheraton in New Delhi. Restaurants in the Taj Hotels feature Rajasthani, Hyderabadi and various South Indian cuisines, and also host food festivals. Today in large cities the diner can find smaller restaurants specializing in Bihari, Chettinad, Kashmiri, Gujarati and other regional cuisines.
One of the most successful Indian chains, Oh! Calcutta, has branches in major cities serving classic Bengali dishes. Its founder, Anjan Chatterjee, a graduate of the Institute of Hotel Management and Catering, runs the Speciality Restaurants group, which also includes restaurants serving North Indian and Chinese food. Another chain, Punjabi by Nature, offers upscale Punjabi food. Enclaves like Hauz Khas Village in New Delhi have dozens of restaurants, ranging from fast food to Indian regional and European restaurants; Bangaluru (formerly Bangalore), the centre of India’s high-tech and call-centre industry, is famous for its lively nightlife and varied restaurant scene. Many establishments have extensive wine lists and serve cocktails and ‘mocktails’, and patrons can rate restaurants on websites like zomato.com.
The Indian attitude towards alcohol has always been ambivalent. Despite the disapproval expressed in the shastras, there is evidence that alcoholic beverages have always been popular, and they were even prescribed by Ayurvedic physicians as a cure for certain conditions. Mahatma Gandhi opposed the consumption of alcohol on the grounds that it harmed the poor, and the Constitution of India, influenced by his thinking, imposed total prohibition in 1977. It lasted only two years, but the production and consumption of alcohol are still prohibited in several states, including Mizoram, Manipur and Gujarat. India also has some ‘dry’ holidays, including Gandhi’s birthday.
Poor people make their own spirits from whatever is available: rice, palm sap, local fruit and vegetables. For middle-class men, the standard drink has always been whisky, which was introduced by the British, and today India is the world’s largest importer of the spirit. (Middle-class women have traditionally confined themselves to fruit juice.) However, wine is becoming the beverage of choice for a small but enthusiastic group of both male and female urbanites. The consumption of wine nearly tripled between 2004 and 2020, although that growth is now levelling off. Import duties on foreign wines are very high, and currently about three-quarters of the supply is produced domestically.14 Wine-drinkers come from the upper middle classes, who have greater exposure to foreign foods and higher disposable income. The fastest-growing market segment is women. One explanation is that wine, made from grapes, is not a major leap from fruit juice. Wine also has the reputation of a sophisticated drink, an indicator of higher status.
Big cities have wine clubs to teach aspiring connoisseurs, and there is even a magazine, Sommelier, devoted to wine. The dingy ‘English wine shops’ have been supplemented, albeit not totally replaced, by elegant establishments in shopping centres. Upscale restaurants have extensive wine lists, and in late 2012 India’s first wine and tapas bar, Vinoteca, opened in Mumbai, serving Spanish-style tapas. Its owner, Rajeev Samant, a graduate of Stanford, left his job in Silicon Valley, California, to start Sula Winery, which produces some of India’s most popular wines. Sula, Grover and Chateau Indage wineries together have more than a 90 per cent share of the market. Almost all domestic wine is produced in Maharashtra, particularly the Nasik region, where higher altitude and a cooler climate are ideal for growing grapes. A major obstacle to the increase in wine consumption is price. The duty on imported wine is 150 per cent, on top of which every state imposes its own taxes.
The growth of a food culture in India has been promoted by the media. While newspapers have always carried recipe columns, many now have lifestyle sections with restaurant reviews and articles on the latest culinary trends. A pioneer reviewer was Busybee, the pen name of a Parsi journalist, Behram Contractor (1930–2001), who for decades wrote the widely read column ‘Busybee’s Guide to Eating Out’ for various publications.15 In 2001 he and his wife, Farzan, started a magazine called Upper Crust, devoted to ‘food, wine and the good life’. It runs articles on restaurants in India and abroad, interviews with chefs and serious gourmets, recipes and travel articles, and sponsors food and wine festivals.16
The number of cookbooks has proliferated since Arjun Appadurai wrote the article ‘How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India’ in 1988. Indeed, the role cookbooks played in increasing familiarity with regional cuisines has to a large degree been supplanted by cooking shows on India’s many private television stations. Online, food blogs and many videos demonstrating the preparation of dishes are available.
The emergence of chef as a respected and respectable profession represents another significant change in India. In the past, with a few exceptions, chefs were regarded as little better than cooks or servants, and middle-class parents would be horrified if their children wanted to take up the profession (a scenario touched on in the film Monsoon Wedding, 2001). Today chefs are celebrities and entrepreneurs with their own blogs, television shows and travel series. Sanjeev Kapoor’s programme Khana Khazana broadcasts to more than 500 million viewers in 120 countries, and he has launched his own food channel and product line. Amateurs and professionals compete for the title of Master Chef on televised competitions based on American and British models. The ultimate proof of the new status of the chef is the film Cheeni Kum (2007), in which the superstar Amitabh Bachchan plays a London-based chef who wins the heart of a glamorous younger woman.
Another post-liberalization change is the proliferation of supermarkets that sell fresh fruit and vegetables, meat and fish, imported Western products (such as taco chips, French cheeses and Italian olive oil) and many prepared and packaged foods. Servants are becoming a thing of the past in middle-class households, and as more women enter the workforce, convenience foods are a necessity. Currently only 2 per cent of fruit and vegetables are processed into prepared foods, but the share is increasing.
The link between diet and health has always been central to the Indian food ethos. Growing prosperity among some segments of society, the availability of fast food, increased consumption of white rice, sugar and fats, and a decline in physical activity have led to an explosion of so-called lifestyle diseases: high blood pressure, coronary problems, obesity and type 2 diabetes.17 Estimates of the number of diabetics in India range from 30 million to 65 million, and as many as 77 million people are classed as pre-diabetic. Type 2 diabetes is becoming common in rural as well as urban areas, and is even turning up in young children. The World Health Organization predicts that by 2015 the cost to India of diabetes and other non-communicable diseases could reach $236 billion.
This has led to a new concern with healthy cooking and eating. Celebrity chefs and the authors of cookbooks have begun to advocate low-fat, low-carbohydrate meals – not an easy proposition, since the traditional Indian diet is starch-based, sweets are very popular, and frying is a common technique. There has been a resurgence of interest in traditional grains, such as millet, as well as traditional Ayurvedic and Siddha cures.18 Meanwhile, ‘organic’ and ‘locavore’ have become bywords among urban foodies, and the government has initiated various programmes to promote the production of organic crops, fruit and vegetables.
A night fruit and vegetable market in New Delhi.
Researchers around the world, not just in India, are now investigating the health-giving properties of traditional Indian remedies. A search of the u.s. National Institute of Health’s PubMed database in January 2013 found 2,143 articles on studies or trials that involved using Ayurvedic remedies to cure such diverse medical problems as diabetes, cancer, tuberculosis and even depression.
