MILLETS ARE STILL NOT ON OUR MENU
India has spent years championing millets on the world stage, declaring 2023 the International Year of Millets, raising minimum support prices, and launching awareness campaigns. Yet the data tells a sobering story: Millet consumption in India has seen a gradual decline in recent years.
A new article in The Hindu BusinessLine by Dr. Anjani Kumar, Ms. Vanshika Pahwa and Dr. Smita Sirohi, lays out the numbers starkly. Rural millet consumption has reduced from 25.1 kg per capita in 1987–88 to just 3.4 kg in 2023–24. Urban consumption has followed the same trajectory, falling from 9.6 kg to 2.3 kg. Their share in India's cereal basket has nearly vanished, not over decades of neglect, but despite years of active promotion.
What's driving this paradox? The article argues it is not a failure of awareness, but of structure. Decades of strong policy support for rice and wheat through guaranteed procurement, subsidized distribution, and the Public Distribution System, have shaped what ends up on household plates. As incomes rise, diets diversify, but millets are rarely the beneficiary. Weak value chains and the near-absence of convenient, ready-to-cook millet products mean that even willing consumers find it hard to make the switch.
The closing line of the piece is worth sitting with: a millet revolution will succeed not when we celebrate millets — but when we eat them.
