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Running the Odisha Millets Mission with Ashima Chaudhary

In the fourth episode of The WELL Labs Show, Ashima Chaudhary (Rural Futures, WELL Labs) speaks about millets, and the Odisha Millets Mission.

Jan 14, 2026

In the fourth episode of The WELL Labs Show, host Pavan Srinath is joined by Ashima Chaudhary (Managing Partner, Rural Futures, WELL Labs) for a deep dive into millets, what they are, why they declined, and what it takes to bring them back at scale.

Ashima explains how millets once widely grown across India’s rainfed and upland landscapes were gradually pushed to the margins after the Green Revolution. Beyond changing consumer preferences, she points to a practical barrier that many people overlook: processing. For several small millets, de-hulling and cleaning required time-consuming manual work, and without local processing ecosystems, everyday consumption steadily collapsed.

The conversation then turns to the story of the Odisha Millets Mission, where a systems approach helped rebuild millet economies end-to-end. Ashima shares how the programme supported farmers to adopt improved practices (without prescribing which millet to grow), strengthened local seed systems through participatory varietal trials, reduced drudgery through processing infrastructure, created demand through food festivals and recipe innovation, and crucially linked supply to large-scale procurement, connecting millets to PDS and ICDS to scale consumption alongside production.

For anyone working on food systems, climate resilience, nutrition, public programmes, or agricultural value chains, this episode offers a rare look at how systems transformation works in practice, across government, civil society, and community institutions.

 

Pavan Srinath is Managing Partner, Communications and Development at WELL Labs. Pavan is a communications and public policy professional who has spent over 14 years working in Bangalore’s not-for-profit sector.

Ashima Chaudhary is the Managing Partner for Rural Futures at WELL Labs. She has spent over a decade working on millet revival across cultivation, value chains, processing ecosystems, and consumption, contributing to large-scale, government-led efforts such as the Odisha Millet Mission.

Resources:

  1. Pavan Srinath: LinkedIn, WELL Labs Website
  2. Ashima Chaudhary: LinkedIn, WELL Labs Website
  3. Shree Anna Abhiyan: Odisha Millets mission website
  4. Reinventing India’s carb-heavy diet with protein, indigenous foods, Scroll.in
  5. ICDS Odisha official website

The WELL Labs Show features rich conversations on water, environment, land and livelihoods, from the people and partners of WELL Labs. Hosted by Pavan Srinath, each episode explores complex environmental and social issues and helps you understand systems and dynamics better.

Subscribe to The WELL Labs show on the WELL Labs YouTube channel. 

Recording by Nabina Chakraborty, Nanditha Gogate and Ritik Pathak

Video editing by Vraj Acharya 

Graphics and artwork by Aparna Nambiar

Podcast production and management by Nabina Chakraborty and Pavan Srinath

 

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