Bengal agriculture minister Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay alleged on Friday that the Narendra Modi government at the Centre had been impeding the export of the state’s major aromatic rice varieties, such as Gobindobhog and Tulaipanji, although both had received geographical indicator (GI) tags in 2017 and are globally recognised for quality.
The minister made the remark at a national-level rice conclave organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce in the city.
At a time when the Mamata Banerjee dispensation has locked horns with the saffron regime over its alleged Bengali-phobia, it remains to be seen whether this latest friction over rice — perhaps as emotive to most Bengalis as their mother tongue — also assumes the proportions of a poll plank.
“I do not know whether I should say this here or not. But the fact is that the Centre is not helping us at all in exporting our aromatic varieties like Gobindobhog or Tulaipanji, despite repeated reminders and persuasion… this is unfortunate,”
said Chattopadhyay.
“We have been trying for more than a year to get permission to export Gobindobhog from the state, sent several rounds of communication, but the clearance could not be obtained yet,” the minister told this newspaper subsequently.
A senior state government official said the Centre was refusing to greenlight the export of the two rice varieties, perhaps to ensure that Basmati, mainly cultivated in northern parts of India, continued to remain dominant in the aromatic rice export sector.
A senior official at the Centre, while admitting that Gobindobhog was yet to receive the nod for export despite Nabanna’s requests, claimed that the clearance had not been granted because of a technical issue.
“It is because of the fact that it is yet to get the harmonised code number required for export,” said S.K. Mandal, the eastern India head of Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), a statutory body under the Union ministry of commerce and industry, when asked to respond to Chattopadhyay’s claim.
Chattopadhyay, when told this, said: “They are simply sitting on it.”
Swapan Datta, an agricultural scientist and a former deputy director general in the Union agriculture ministry who chaired the meeting, said the Centre should not further prolong the matter, considering its possible impact on Bengal’s agri economy.
Estimates suggest India exported approximately 60.65 lakh tonnes of Basmati in the 2024-25 fiscal. In contrast, all other rice varieties taken together — called “non-Basmati rice” — accounted for around 121 lakh tonnes of export during the same period. Gobindobhog garners a small part of the latter volume, and Tulaipanji, an even
smaller fraction.
Chattopadhyay said, considering the heightened impacts of climate change triggered by cyclones, floods, and incursion of saline water on agriculture, especially in the coastal areas, agricultural scientists in the state had developed several saline-tolerant high-yield varieties
of rice.
“After repeated cyclones and increasing salinity in the fields affecting conventional rice varieties, the chief minister had called the agricultural scientists in my department and asked them to work on the matter expeditiously. Our scientists could come up with such varieties, named by the chief minister as Nona Sworno (Salty Gold),” said
the minister.
Anupam Pal, a retired agriculture expert from Chattopadhyay’s department, said: “We already have several traditional rice varieties which can counter high salinity, although less yielding compared to Nona Sworno, and they also need to be encouraged.”
Several rice farmers, present in the meeting, echoed Pal while saying they started to cultivate the newly developed salt-tolerant varieties on an experimental basis.