History of Millets in India — 7,000 Years of Shree Anna

Millets are not a trend. They are the original grain of the Indian subcontinent — older than rice, older than wheat in this land, woven into the Vedic texts, the Arthashastra, and the agricultural traditions of every Indian state.

This is their story.

The Harappan Beginning (3000–1200 BCE)

Millet grains have been discovered in storage vessels during excavations at Harappan sites including Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, and Lothal. Charred plant remains confirm cultivation during the Bronze Age Harappan civilisation dating to approximately 2500 BCE.

Both winter and summer crops including millets were part of agricultural systems across the Early (3000–2500 BC), Mature (2500–2000 BC) and Late Harappan (2000–1200 BC) phases. Significantly, the Late Harappan period was marked by a diversification toward drought-resistant small-grained millets — possibly as an adaptive response to climate change toward cooler, drier conditions.

Browntop millet was domesticated in the Deccan ashmound tradition around 2800 BC. Foxtail millet cultivation is documented as far back as 8,000 years across Asia.

Vedic and Classical India (1500 BCE – 1400 CE)

The Rigveda and other Vedic texts (1500–500 BCE) mention millet cultivation explicitly. Millets were considered nutritious and versatile and used for both culinary and ritual purposes — they were the grain of the gods and the grain of the people simultaneously.

Kodo millet appears in the Arthashastra of Kautilya (Chanakya), written during the Mauryan age (300–200 BCE), where it is recorded as “kodrava” — a common grain of the people.

The 14th-century traveller Ibn Batuta, visiting India during Muhammad-bin-Tughlak’s reign (1325–1351 CE), recorded that kodo millet was the commonest grain consumed across the Deccan and South India.

Millets featured in religious ceremonies, festivals, literature, and folklore across every Indian state. Ragi (finger millet) mudde is documented in Kannada literature as a royal dish. Bajra roti has been eaten across Rajasthan for over a thousand years.

Classical Ayurveda gave millets their own taxonomy. The Charaka Samhita places them under Shookadhanya varga (awned-grain group) in its Annapanavidhi chapter, while later compilers grouped over two dozen small grains under Trinadhanya (“grass-grains”) or Kshudradhanya (“minor grains”) — terms that, centuries later, would be echoed almost exactly by the modern marketing phrase “nutri-cereals.” Each millet had its own Sanskrit name still traceable in regional languages today: Priyangu/Kangu (foxtail millet), Shyamaka (barnyard millet), Kodrava (kodo millet), and Nivara (a wild grain related to rice), among others. The Sushruta Samhita catalogues several of these as Kudhanya — “inferior grains” — valued precisely for being light, cooling, and easy to digest, the opposite of the modern insult “coarse grain” that would later be pinned on them.

Deeper Roots — What Recent Archaeology Adds

Excavations continue to push the millet story earlier and wider than the Harappan-centred narrative above. Archaeobotanical surveys place Kashmir as a Bronze Age millet exchange hub linking South and Central Asia between roughly 3000–2000 BCE, and sorghum cultivation in Punjab has been traced to the pre-Harappan period, around 2300–2000 BCE — earlier than its appearance at the mature Harappan sites. Globally, researchers now describe millet as “the missing piece in the puzzle” of how prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies transitioned to settled, multi-crop farming, since its low water and soil demands let it travel and take root far ahead of rice or wheat agriculture. None of this displaces the Harappan evidence above — it fills in the wider Bronze Age network that Harappan millet cultivation was already part of.

The Green Revolution and the Great Collapse (1960s–1980s)

Before the Green Revolution, millets accounted for 40% of India’s total grain production. They were the dietary foundation of hundreds of millions of people — farmers, labourers, and rural communities across every state.

The Green Revolution, led by agronomist M.S. Swaminathan and supported by international organisations in the 1960s–70s, introduced high-yield varieties of rice and wheat that dramatically increased caloric output per acre. This was genuinely needed — India faced famine-level food insecurity.

But the same policies systematically displaced millets:

Government procurement and PDS (Public Distribution System) was built almost exclusively around rice and wheat
Subsidised irrigation favoured water-intensive crops like rice
Agricultural research funding shifted away from millets
Millet cultivation became economically unviable compared to subsidised rice and wheat

By 2000, millets had fallen from 40% of India’s grain production to under 20%. Many minor millets — Browntop, Kodo, Barnyard, Little — nearly disappeared from commercial cultivation entirely.

The Revival (2018–present)

The turn began quietly, driven by two forces:

The diabetes and lifestyle disease epidemic — India’s rapidly urbanising population developed the highest rates of Type 2 diabetes in the world, and nutritionists began pointing to the shift away from low-GI millets to high-GI rice and wheat as a contributing factor.
Climate change — as rainfall patterns became unpredictable, agronomists rediscovered that millets grow with 80% less water than rice and thrive in drought conditions.

2018: The Indian government launched the National Year of Millets.

2019: India proposed to the UN that 2023 be declared the International Year of Millets.

2023: The UN International Year of Millets was celebrated globally, with India as the lead country. Prime Minister Modi coined the term “Shree Anna” in his Budget response to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s announcement on February 1, 2023. The Global Millets Conference was held in New Delhi, attended by delegates from 102 nations.

PM Modi declared: “In our country, ‘Shri’ is not associated with a name without any reason. ‘Shri’ is associated with prosperity and integrity. Shree Anna means a door to prosperity for small farmers, the cornerstone of nutrition for crores of countrymen, welfare of the tribal society, more crop yield with less water, chemical-free farming.”

The Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR) in Hyderabad was designated as India’s Global Centre of Excellence on Millets by the PM in 2023.

The momentum didn’t stop when the calendar year ended. ICRISAT and the FAO formally closed out IYM2023 at a high-level event at FAO headquarters in Rome on 29 March 2024, and the same week saw the Global South Millet Convening in Dubai (25–26 March 2024), where representatives from leading millet-producing nations discussed cooperation and new regional Centres of Excellence for Millets — turning a single designated “year” into an ongoing international coalition.

Where we are now (2025)

India produced 180.15 lakh tonnes of millets in 2024–25 — 4.43 lakh tonnes higher than the previous year. India is the world’s leading producer and exporter of millets.

Per-capita domestic millet consumption has risen from 2–3 kg per month to 14 kg per month. Over 500 startups are working under the Shree Anna banner. Millet cafes have opened across Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Mumbai.

The grain that built Indian civilisation is coming home.

Learn more: The 9 Shree Anna Millets · Government Schemes