Scroll through any social media platform, particularly during the summer months, and one encounters a proliferation of short-form videos like Instagram reels, YouTube vlogs, and influencer content—celebrating “forgotten” or “traditional” food practices. Earthen pots of fermented rice, carefully curated “grandmother’s recipes,” and slow, rustic methods of preparation are framed as rediscovered treasures within a contemporary wellness landscape. This mediated visibility raises a fundamental question: who forgot these foods, and who sustained them across generations? Such renewed attention is not merely nostalgic; it aligns with discernible shifts in how food is consumed, valued, and circulated today.

India’s fermented food and beverage market has expanded significantly in recent years, driven by rising health consciousness and demand for probiotic-rich diets (IMARC Group, 2025). Globally, fermented foods constitute a substantial segment of the food economy, increasingly marketed through the idioms of gut health, immunity, and sustainability (Allied Market Research, 2023). Fermentation, once embedded in everyday domestic practice, is now recoded as both a nutritional strategy and a lifestyle choice. Within this broader transformation, fermentation itself is being re-signified. In India, what is often described as a “fermented food revival” brings together staples such as curd and idli (rice cake) batter with global imports like kombucha and kimchi. Yet this revival is uneven. It privileges forms of fermentation that align with urban middle-class aspirations and aestheticised representations of “clean” and “mindful” consumption, while sidelining practices rooted in subsistence, labour, and ecological necessity (Johnston & Baumann, 2015; Naccarato & LeBesco, 2012). It is within this uneven terrain that fermented rice becomes analytically significant.

A staple across eastern India, pakhala in Odisha or panta bhaat in Bengal, is prepared by soaking leftover cooked rice in water and allowing it to ferment lightly. This is not an emergent culinary innovation but a long-standing practice embedded within subsistence economies, where food is shaped by labour, climate, and resource constraints rather than choice. What has changed is not the practice itself, but the epistemic frameworks through which it is recognised and valued.

Historically, pakhala has been closely associated with agrarian and labouring communities, including many lower-caste and Adivasi households, for whom fermented rice provided an affordable, sustaining, and climate-responsive meal suited to prolonged physical labour in high temperatures. Its ease of preparation—requiring no reheating and minimal fuel—rendered it integral to everyday subsistence, structuring a labour-oriented food system attuned to environmental conditions. At the same time, such practices have been subject to forms of social stigma. Fermented rice, particularly when prepared from leftovers, has often been marked as basi (stale) and associated with rural backwardness, in contrast to freshly cooked food valorised within dominant upper-caste norms of purity and respectability (Guru, 2009). These distinctions are not merely culinary. They index deeper socio-historical hierarchies through which food becomes a marker of status and cultural legitimacy. Yet historical traces complicate this marginal status. Variants of soaked or fermented rice are documented within temple food systems associated with the Jagannath Temple, where rice-based preparations form part of a long-standing ritual food economy (Mohanty, 2009; Kulke & Schnepel, 2001). More broadly, historical accounts of Indian food practices suggest that fermented and leftover rice preparations have circulated widely across eastern India within everyday and agrarian life worlds, even if not always codified within elite textual traditions (Achaya,1998; Sen, 2015).

Pakhala, therefore, occupies an ambivalent position. It moves across domains of ritual, labour, and everyday consumption, even as its symbolic value shifts across caste- and class-structured regimes of taste. In recent years, pakhala has undergone a significant cultural reevaluation. The institutionalisation of 20 March as Pakhala Dibasa marks its emergence as a symbol of regional identity, while restaurants and culinary entrepreneurs increasingly recast it as heritage cuisine. Yet this revaluation is marked by contradiction. As pakhala enters curated gastronomic spaces, it is often detached from its associations with labouring bodies and subsistence economies. What is ultimately valorised is not the practice in its lived context, but its aestheticised and commodified form. This marginalisation obscures the sophisticated ecological and biochemical knowledge embedded in the practice.

At its most basic, pakhala represents an act of temporal extension: rice cooked on the previous day is not discarded but reactivated through soaking and fermentation. This transformation is both cultural and biochemical. The fermentation process introduces lactic acid bacteria, particularly Lactobacillus species, enhancing micronutrient bioavailability and producing a naturally cooling meal suited to tropical climates (Tamang et al., 2016; Marco et al., 2017). In this sense, pakhala operates as a form of microbial technology, where human practices and non-human agents co-produce nourishment that is efficient, adaptive, and ecologically attuned. Its ecological significance is particularly evident in regions where summer temperatures frequently exceed 40°C, with its high water content and fermentation-induced cooling properties supporting hydration, digestion, and sustained labour. These characteristics are not the outcome of modern nutritional science but of long-standing ecological knowledge refined through generational practice. Even as such knowledge persists, its visibility is reshaped through new circuits of representation and value. The digital celebration of fermented foods often detaches them from the labour, caste, and marginal contexts that sustain them, reframing subsistence practices through the language of health and sustainability.

Pakhala bhata exemplifies this transformation. Its cooling properties and low-energy preparation render it increasingly relevant in the context of rising temperatures. At the same time, intensifying heat renders fermentation processes more unpredictable and, at times, unsafe, introducing new forms of precarity for communities that continue to rely on it.

The question, then, is not simply why fermented foods are returning, but why they acquire value only when detached from the social relations that once made them ordinary. However, Pakhala is not exceptional but indicative. Many such practices carry indigenous knowledge yet remain marginal until appropriated within dominant regimes of value. Attending to them demands a shift from aesthetic appreciation to recognising the labour and histories they encode. Perceived this way, pakhala, or panta bhaat, makes visible the social processes through which value is produced, circulated, and unevenly distributed across caste and labour hierarchies.

References:

Achaya, K. T. (1998). Indian food: A historical companion. Oxford University Press.

Allied Market Research. (2023). Fermented food and beverages market size, share and trends analysis. https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/fermented-products-market-A171592

Guru, G. (2009). Food as a metaphor for cultural hierarchies. Economic and Political Weekly, 44(23), 17–19.

IMARC Group. (2025). India’s fermented food and beverage market report. https://www.imarcgroup.com/india-fermented-food-and-beverage-market

Johnston, J., & Baumann, S. (2015). Foodies: Democracy and distinction in the gourmet foodscape (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Kulke, H., & Schnepel, B. (2001). Jagannath revisited: Studying society, religion and the state in Orissa. Manohar.

Marco, M. L., Heeney, D., Binda, S., Cifelli, C. J., Cotter, P. D., Foligné, B., Gänzle, M., Kort, R., Pasin, G., Pihlanto, A., Smid, E. J., & Hutkins, R. (2017). Health benefits of fermented foods: Microbiota and beyond. Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 44, 94–102.

Naccarato, P., & Le Besco, K. (2012). Culinary capital. Berg.

Sen, C. T. (2015). Feasts and fasts: A history of food in India. Reaktion Books.

Tamang, J. P., Shin, D. H., Jung, S. J., & Chae, S. W. (2016). Functional properties of microorganisms in fermented foods. Frontiers in Microbiology, 7, 578.

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Ananya Roy Pratihar is an author, academic researcher in the field of literature and Environmental Humanities and faculty at the Institute of Management and Information Science, Bhubaneswar.