Prime Minister Modi’s makhana push has stirred new hope among Bihar’s growers – yet those at the bottom of the chain are propping up Hindutva, not prosperity.

Deep inside Bihar’s Darbhanga district, in the squalid village of Tataila, a feeble-looking but agile Upendra Saini tiptoes along a trail of unevenly placed bricks to avoid the mud and slush around his house – a crudely built structure with one large chamber. The air inside is musty, as smoke escaping from smouldering clay ovens mixes with the odour of livestock and manure on a rainy day.

Pots and pans litter the unlevelled earth, and bundles of clothes are stacked on an old, rusting bicycle leaning against a weathered brick wall. At the rear of the house lies a stretch of lush wilderness and marshland, where Upendra grows fox nuts, India’s up-and-coming superfood. Yet it’s hard to trace the story of Bihar’s “black diamond” boom back to this place.

Fox nut caught the media’s attention after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he consumes it “at least three hundred out of three hundred sixty-five days a year” and outlined his government’s commitment to boosting its production and marketing.

Though the Prime Minister’s much-televised pronouncements sparked hope among Bihar’s nearly 10 lakh families involved in cultivating and processing the crop, a closer look at the business reveals that profits are largely pocketed by big entrepreneurs who buy the produce cheap and sell it dear across Indian and overseas markets. The landless labourers continue to slog for a meagre Rs 300 a day.

The fond hope that is makhana

Makhana is vegan, low in calories and fat and provides plant-based protein and dietary fibre. Given its dietary value, economists expect the global makhana trade to soar from $43.56 million in 2023 to over $100 million by 2033. It’s no wonder the snack, popped from waterlily (Euryale ferox) seeds that resemble dark pellets, is called the “black diamond”.

Upendra is upbeat that the Prime Minister has been endorsing fox nut cultivation. “Things might just change,” he says with quiet optimism. His lined forehead and scraggly, receding hair add years to his 55, evoking hardship and resilience – both defining features of Bihar’s agrarian folk. According to the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, agricultural households in Bihar earn Rs 9,252 a month – just over Rs 1.1 lakh a year – well below the national rural per capita income of Rs 1.52 lakh.

Five years ago, Upendra bought fox nut seeds at Rs 12 to 15 per kg and sold his harvest for less than Rs 5,000 per quintal, making hardly any profit. But now, the price of the diet-friendly staple has spiked dramatically. The wholesale price of a quintal ranges between Rs 20,000 and Rs 35,000. Yet the hike doesn’t immediately translate into higher earnings.

Upendra sells his fox nuts at roughly Rs 10,000 per quintal to middlemen, who then pocket most of the profit.

It takes 20 to 30 days of intensive labour to prepare fifty sacks of fox nuts, each containing eight to ten kilos of the crop. At premium rates, small-scale cultivators say they could make roughly Rs 80,000 per yield after covering raw material and labour costs. Two or three good yields a year can bring in about Rs 20,000 a month – based on the optimistic estimates of growers who did the maths for this reporter.

“But that is only when things go as planned,” Upendra interjects. This year, for instance, the region received scant rainfall until August, and he doesn’t have access to a borewell. The water level in the embankment he had erected receded sharply, damaging half his crop. “The following months, I slogged on a neighbour’s field to scrape together a living,” he says, before lapsing into quiet contemplation – perhaps of life’s perverse cycle of hope and despair.

In September, Prime Minister Modi launched the National Makhana Board in Purnia, allocating nearly Rs 475 crore for it. The board aims to raise production standards, improve post-harvest management, introduce new technologies, and strengthen marketing and export linkages. But ensuring an equitable share of profits remains an unaddressed challenge.

Manoj Saini, a twenty-something fox nut grower, demonstrates the precision required in roasting and popping the seeds after they’ve been harvested and sun-dried. First, a group of children continuously stir the harvested seeds on iron pans atop charcoal-fuelled clay stoves. When a faint crackling sound emerges, Manoj lifts them out onto a hard surface, where a mallet is used to strike them. The kernels jump around like projectiles before dropping to the floor – doubling in size with each blow.

“Timing is key,” says Manoj. A woman arrives to announce it’s time for lunch – a simple meal of rice and dal. India’s superfood growers’ own diet is woefully basic.

The children of Tataila don’t go to school. There is a government high school, and most are enrolled, but attending classes offers little incentive. “Cultivating makhana is labour-intensive. It can be draining for a grower who cannot afford helpers. Children are additional hands; it makes sense,” says Manoj, sharing the poor man’s logic of what is practical, however quixotic it may seem to the better-off.

Manoj has worked with his hands since he was seven or eight but betrays no anger over a stolen childhood. His calm stems not from lofty reflections on life's tribulations and the need to bear them with patience but, tragically, from the absence of any dream – except survival.

According to him, not every labourer in the village is fortunate enough to work with growers who have the resources and know-how to cultivate fox nuts on artificial wetlands, where the water reaches only the knees. Others must dive to the bottom of ponds, holding their breath as they pluck the plants – whose round, prickly leaves leave them with bruises, infections, and swelling.

This is a remote hamlet, but it is visited regularly by YouTubers seeking to create “content.” They have gained notoriety for uploading sensational videos about the makhana divers’ struggles, but never to intervene on their behalf. Villagers accuse them of coercing farmers or local officials into paying them, then deleting the videos. Two workers refused to speak to this reporter, saying, “Rs 1,000 for a fifteen-minute video.”

Hindutva undercurrent – or current

They may be poor, but Upendra, Manoj and several others in Tataila remain unshakably loyal to the prime minister, barely stopping short of applause at the mention of Narendra Modi.

“Whenever villagers have a bad harvest, it is his Rs 1,100 pension for the elderly and incentives for women that help families secure two meals,” says Upendra.

Others can’t fully explain their deep affection for Modi, but their comments point to the deep penetration of Hindutva into Bihar’s nondescript hinterland. Against a backdrop of thatch houses separated by bamboo fences and mud-choked pathways, Hindutva manifests vividly. The swastika is inscribed on the facades of homes – sometimes framed by a hand-drawn heart emoji in chalk. The national flag flutters atop fences. Some sacks of fox nuts and other produce bear the swastika or Om symbol in a fiery red hue.

“The RSS is working around the clock to mobilise village youth into the Hindutva fold,” says Roshan, a stringer with a Hindi daily, referring to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, ideological parent of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Roshan says elite caste-run neighbourhood "samitis" or informal groups are trying to co-opt Dalit and Extremely Backward Class youth into the Hindutva fold by involving them in organising Hindu festivals, especially Ram Navami. “They gradually cultivate in them the sense that Muslims are a common enemy, creating affinity for the Hindu-nationalist BJP,” he says.

The effect of that grassroots campaign is evident in conversations with villagers from disadvantaged social groups.

A group of farmers gathered on the verandah of one Kapleshwar Mahto’s house plays cards on a leisurely afternoon. Their conversation isn’t peppered with the usual election-time topics like jobs and inflation. They acknowledge, in passing, that half their rice harvest was damaged by the late monsoon, but what dominates their talk are the Ram mandir in Ayodhya and the revocation of Article 370, which stripped Kashmir of its special status.

“We are very happy that the temple was built,” Mahto says, as others nod approvingly. The Opposition’s charges of “assaults on democracy”, including allegations of voter-roll manipulation, don’t stir any sense of crisis in this gathering.

In Bihar, the Election Commission conducted a voter roll revision barely three months before polling, and 65 lakh voters were reportedly struck off the rolls – an exercise critics have called a pre-election manipulation benefiting the ruling National Democratic Alliance, composed of the BJP and JD(U). Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and MP Rahul Gandhi led a “Voter Adhikar Yatra” across the state to denounce what his party, the Congress, terms “vote theft.”

Mahto and his friends recall watching “reels” of Gandhi’s impassioned appeals for social justice and his allegations of “vote theft,” but that hasn’t precipitated their trickle into the Congress stream. This, even though they earn less from their backbreaking work than soothsayers in their area. Satyendra Jha, a palmist and gemstone-seller at the nearby Ahilya Devi temple, says he attracts “an impressive beeline of visitors during festivals” and has “not a single dull day”, earning about Rs 30,000 a month.

The paintings of gods and goddesses that adorn Jha’s fortune-telling kiosk also decorate the crumbling walls of peasants’ thatched homes, creating in them a fallacy of empowered existence.