S. Anand draws his own conclusions from a trip to Azamgarh, about which Aditya Nigam had earlier written a post on Kafila.

While the urban elite, who can afford to indulge the growing fad of organic slow-food, would now happily pay a premium price for the hard bread (appreciating its high-fibre content) that Dalits were forced to eat owing to denial and deprivation, the rural Dalits are forced into the maida economy of Maggi (which kirana stores in Purvanchal’s villages now sell). As the new (Dalit) consumers gain dignity by consuming pesticide-heavy milled, polished, long-grained rice, the urban rich embrace the ‘healthy alternative’ of organic coarse-grained hand-pounded brown rice. It is the same logic that peddles American junk food (a McDonald burger) as ‘I’m loving it’ food to unsuspecting aspirational classes in India. While the urban elite look to buy farmhouses off cities, the rural migrants cling to the edges of the city and are forced to relish crumbs as crisps. [Read the full article.]

And since the article also talks about labour shortage as a result of migration to cities, it reminds me of a flood of recent news reports about the shortage of migrant Bihari labour in Punjab this year. Seems like I’ll have to eat humble pie on this.