Millet, Ritual, and Identity: The Socio-Cultural Significance of Indigenous Food Among the Kutia Kandha of Odisha, India

The declining share of millets in India’s food systems from 22.2 per cent of total food grain production in 1950–1951 to around 6 per cent in recent years not only altered agrarian economies but also disrupted the ritual and cosmological worlds of indigenous (tribal) communities. This article investigates the socio-cultural significance of millet among the Kutia Kandha, a particularly vulnerable tribal group of Kandhamal and Kalahandi districts, Odisha. It poses the questions how does millet function as a ritual medium through which social relations, gendered identities, and ecological ethics are produced and reproduced? How are these practices changing under the pressures of market integration, outmigration, and state-led millet revival? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and ritual economy framework, it shows that millet operates simultaneously as a subsistence grain, a ritual offering to Dharni Penu (the Earth Goddess), and a gendered knowledge system in which women are primary custodians of seeds, songs, and sacred practice. The article demonstrates that while generational shifts and market forces are eroding millet-based practices, state interventions such as the Odisha Millet Mission (OMM) have had uneven reach among subsistence-level households. The study’s originality lies in its insider ethnographic positioning conducted in Kui by a researcher from Kandhamal and in its contribution to debates on indigenous food sovereignty, ritual economy, and decolonial approaches to sustainable development, including the UN Sustainable Development Goal on Zero Hunger (SDG 2).