In 2019, Kapil Toppo realised he’d grown tired of his job as an engineer with Flipkart. “In corporate jobs, all that people care about is your package and how much you earn,” said Toppo, who belongs to the Kurukh, or Oraon, Adivasi community, and lives in Ranchi, Jharkhand. “It’s never about what change you’ve brought or what legacy you leave behind you.”
Toppo decided to take a year-long sabbatical to explore other professional opportunities. Around this time, people in his social circle were working on the revival and promotion of Adivasi culture – inspired by them, Toppo decided to try and set up a food enterprise. In February 2020, he launched a restaurant in Ranchi, which focused on Jharkhandi cuisine and which he called Mandi Eddpa at the suggestion of friends. The term blends words from two Adivasi languages – mandi means food in Mundari and eddpa means home in Kurukh.
“Our idea was to bring Adivasi cuisine into the mainstream,” Toppo said. He noted that an older restaurant in the city, Ajam Emba, founded by a Kurukh restaurateur named Aruna Tirkey, also worked towards preserving and promoting Adivasi cuisines, but catered to a more elite customer. “We wanted to bring our food to the streets, make it popular for the youth,” said Toppo.
Toppo is part of a new crop of Adivasi entrepreneurs who have started their own businesses with an interest in promoting traditional Adivasi culture. As experts note, these efforts represent a way for these communities to claim space in the modern capitalist economy, which has typically excluded traditional communities and ways of life. In 2021, former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren cited data from the Confederation of Indian Industry, according to which only 2.5% of the state’s Scheduled Tribe population was engaged in businesses of their own.
A part of the reason for this exclusion is that historically, Adivasi communities have been organised around principles of coexistence and cooperation. As anthropologist Abhay Minz writes, the concept of private property and the idea that wealth should be accumulated did not exist among them – rather, land, forests and other resources belonged to the collective. This is a key reason that Adivasis’ transition to a neoliberal economy has been slower than that of other communities – Anju Toppo, an assistant professor of history from Ranchi’s St Xavier’s College, noted that even in the city, which is the capital of Jharkhand and a major hub of Adivasi communities of eastern India, Adivasis have been slow to open their own businesses.
But it is not only the communities’ differing values that have left them at a disadvantage – they have also struggled to access capital that can help them start businesses. A study analysing Jharkhand-specific data from the Sixth Economic Census found that “establishments with SC and ST owners have a lower probability of getting finance from both formal and informal sources than non-SC and non-ST business owners.”
“Earlier, the lack of various forms of capital made most Adivasis keep away from starting their business,” said Anju Toppo. But nowadays, she observed, Adivasis are eager to start businesses with whatever forms of capital they can access. Indeed, in the past decade, several small-scale Adivasi-led businesses have sprung up in Ranchi. In a drive through the city, one sees an increasing number of shops with names like “Tigga Electricals” or “Kacchap Helmets”, which use Adivasi clan names or surnames for their businesses.
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On March 11, I met Toppo at his latest venture, Cafe de Arte near Nagra Toli in Ranchi. The restaurant is housed inside an ancestral home, and its walls bear framed posters of pop culture characters like Darth Vader and Popeye, alongside vintage anthropological photos of Adivasis.
Toppo explained that when he set up his first business his friends and family were sceptical of the idea. “I’m only the second generation of job holders in my family, so people think it is better to hold on to a job and be financially safe,” he said.
Indeed, he has faced several obstacles since he first embarked on his food ventures, which have been funded with his own savings. The first iteration of Mandi Eddpa was forced to close within ten days of opening, after the Covid-19 pandemic struck. Over the next 16 months, it ran sporadically through the pandemic – Toppo noted that with the help of crowdfunded donations, the establishment delivered close to 8,000 free meals for Covid-19 patients through this time, before closing in June 2021.
A second iteration of the restaurant opened in July 2021 in a different location, and ran for a little over a year, before closing as a result of disputes with the owner of the property.
Yet, Toppo’s entrepreneurial spirit remained undiminished. In July 2021, he received a job offer in Seoul, South Korea, as a manager at an e-commerce company. He accepted the offer, leaving his staff to run Mandi Eddpa. While in Seoul, he sampled dishes like ramyeon, a kind of noodle soup, and tteokbokki, a kind of rice cake. Many of these dishes reminded him of home. “I felt the food there was similar to what we in Jharkhand eat in villages,” he said. “We too have rice cake dishes like pitha, and throw in dried leafy greens or dried fish into our dishes. So, I thought this cuisine would work well in Ranchi.”
When he returned to Ranchi, Toppo decided to recreate those Korean flavours and infuse them with Jharkhandi ingredients at a new unit of Mandi Eddpa – Cafe de Arte, which he launched in November 2023. Alongside, Mandi Eddpa continued to function as a cloud kitchen and catering service that served a variety of traditional Adivasi and Jharkhandi dishes such as pitha, dhuska, chilka roti, suri bhaath and dumbu.
Finally, Toppo had a chance to serve customers and learn how they responded to traditional cuisine. He recounted that in 2021, Mandi Eddpa had a stall selling ragi momos at a handicrafts mela, but had hardly any customers for the first two days. “I was worried and considered going back to using maida, which customers are used to,” he said. “But slowly people started trying it out and we did pretty well.”
He explained that even today, it remains uncommon to find restaurants that offer Jharkhandi food. In his view, many Adivasis stopped eating their traditional foods after shifting to cities because they were surrounded by racist perceptions of their culture, and thus developed a sense of shame about their food. He said, “In public, Adivasis would hide that they eat maar bhaath,” a kind of fermented rice, “because people would say things like – ‘look, the junglis eat this kind of food.’”
But, he added, their outlook was changing. “After Ajam Emba started, people began taking pride in their food – especially the fact that the food is organic and healthy,” Toppo said. Nowadays, Mandi Eddpa’s clients increasingly request that Jharkhandi dishes be included in wedding platters, which they rarely did in earlier decades.
Toppo believes that much of the food available in Jharkhand’s cities are an amalgam of the food of Adivasi and non-Adivasi communities, while villages are a treasure trove of traditional cuisines. “I think if we dig deeper in Jharkhand’s villages, we’ll discover a thousand new varieties of dishes and recipes,” he said. He recounted examples of such recipes, which he came across during a research trip he had made to a village in Gumla district before setting up Mandi Eddpa: a sherbet made out of the jirhul flower and a drink made out of the chakod plant’s seeds, which tasted like black coffee.
Toppo envisions a future outlet of Mandi Eddpa that will resemble Chokhi Dhani in Rajasthan – a tourist village dedicated to food and traditional arts and crafts of the state. “I need more capital to do that,” he said. “There are business communities who have been running businesses for generations. We are struggling, but we will learn with time.”
He noted that though he was an entrepreneur, he drew inspiration from the work of leading contemporary Adviasi activists such as Dayamani Barla, who works on land rights, and the educator Zephyrinus Baxla. “This work is our very own ‘ulgulan’,” or revolution, Toppo said.
Inside Cafe de Arte, next to the room where customers are served, is a room where clothes woven from Jharkhand’s traditional textiles are displayed. This is a small store for Tribe Tree – an enterprise that sells apparel designed using Jharkhand’s traditional textiles, artforms and motifs. The company was founded by Sumangal Nag, who serves as its creative head, and Deepti Oraon, who is a design consultant and heads marketing. While Oraon belongs to the Oraon Adivasi community, and refers to herself as such, Nag, the child of an inter-caste marriage, prefers to use the term “indigenous” to describe himself. Toppo enjoys a close friendship with Nag, who wears several hats, including that of modelling mentor and performing artist.
Nag holds diplomas in fashion and textiles from Ranchi and Kolkata. His decision to launch his own business has its roots in work he did in 2005, when he visited Jharkhand’s rural areas to research tattoos, musical instruments and traditional wear. He made these trips as part of his job as a floor manager and costume designer in a theatrical musical production in Ranchi, in which dancers from across India performed. “At the time I thought that Jharkhand’s folk costumes didn’t look as aesthetically appealing as other state’s costumes and so I began working on that,” he said. From 2007 onwards, Nag began to work towards designing apparel using traditional textiles worn by Adivasi communities.
Tribe Tree produces three different kinds of clothing. The first is streetwear, like T-shirts and bomber jackets, which use popular Adivasi motifs, illustrations of iconic leaders like Birsa Munda and slogans such as “jal, jangal, jameen”. The second is traditional wear using textiles worn by Adivasi communities like the Biru and Kukhna.
The company also makes more specific wedding or celebratory attire, in which they insert tribal motifs. “Nowadays, especially in weddings, I see that people are losing our culture because of outside influence,” Nag said. “I tell them to wear gowns and lehengas instead of traditional sarees if they must, but to at least include some traditional motifs in them.” Nag then pulled out his phone to show a wedding photo, in which a bride had worn a gown that used the Paitkar art from eastern Jharkhand.
Nag explained that most of the communities that weave clothes for the Adivasi communities are Mulvasi or non-Adivasi native communities, such as the Julaha, Sanvasi and Tanti, which are distinct from Adivasi communities in some ways, such as in their different linguistic origins. Nonetheless, they belong to Jharkhand and share certain cultural elements with Adivasi communities. Earlier, Nag had made it a point to work with these communities to ensure that the weavers, whom he calls artisans, get paid fairly and that traditional weaving methods live on.
Since the pandemic, however, Nag has been working more with vendors who machine-manufacture textiles. He explained that this was because he faces a range of struggles in his work with weavers. These range from temporary but major setbacks, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, to long-term shifts in customer preferences, towards machine-manufactured clothes, which are cheaper and can be produced faster. He noted that while working with artisans, handling orders from individual customers was feasible, but that supplying larger orders to retailers and clothing companies was nearly impossible. “Artisans from rural areas also have a lot of other responsibilities and interruptions in their work, which makes it difficult to keep up with clients’ timelines,” he said.
While there were a few items on sale at the Cafe de Arte shop, including coats and vests, Nag explained that most of Tribe Tree’s products were produced after they were pre-ordered by clients. “It’s too expensive to keep a ready stock around always,” he said. “We need more skilled hands to keep this work alive.”
One of the biggest challenges that Nag faces is of other vendors stealing his designs. “A lot of people have copied my designs,” he said with a slight smile. “I guess if you’re doing well people are bound to copy you. One can’t do anything about this.”
Nag explained that in some instances, even if traditional designs are not copied, they are pushed to the edges of the marketplace by more widely available options. For instance, he said, a key item of traditional attire of the Oraon, Munda and Kharia Adivasi communities of Chota Nagpur was a gamcha, or towel, which is wrapped around the head or worn on the neck, and is usually red or maroon, and white, in colour. In recent years, the Jharkhand market has seen a large influx of gamchas made in the Assamese style, which are similar in colour, but have different motifs. “The designs on our textiles are simple but they are taken from the lived experience of Adivasis,” he said. “We mostly use geometric patterns and flowers – stripes represent rivers and triangles represent mountains. Whereas Assamese gamchas often use conches.”
Nag is worried that with the intermingling of the two styles in the market, there may come a time when Jharkhand’s traditional designs are wiped out in favour of cheaper Assamese gamchas. “This is why design work is important, because vendors don’t think about tradition and community,” he said.
Nag envisions a future where Jharkhand’s textiles become famous across the country. “In Ranchi, you’ll see a tribal fashion show almost every month which is organised and walked by non-tribals, where they wear leaves and shoddy clothing,” he said. “The general crowd sees us differently, their thinking is still coloured by bigotry. We need to crack down on such misconceptions about tribals and take pride in our clothing.”
Some Adivasi entrepreneurs in Jharkhand have sought to establish ventures that evolve out of their relationship with their land. One such venture is The Open Field, based out of a 20-acre farm around 30 km from Ranchi city, on the Hutar-Lodhma road in Khunti district.
The Open Field was started in 2018 by an Oraon couple – dental surgeon Dr Manisha Oraon and former pilot Abhishek Oraon. They were joined in the venture by their mechanical engineer friend Prateek Toppo.
Abhishek and Manisha are originally from Ranchi, but had lived almost a decade outside their native place owing to their work commitments. When Abhishek’s father was about to retire, the two began to consider setting up an enterprise using their ancestral land. “The idea of returning home to Jharkhand and working from here has become alien to us tribals,” Abhishek said. “All we talk about is land, but if we don’t use it, then no law is going to save our land.”
After some discussion, the duo decided to set up a rose plantation, an initiative in keeping with Abhishek’s father’s longstanding wish to practice floriculture. Using their own funds, the trio set up a polyhouse, a kind of greenhouse that uses polyethylene sheets for cover rather than glass – for some time, their rose plantation was the largest in the state.
Then, however, the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and sales nosedived. As the founders wondered what to do with roses that they couldn’t sell in the lockdown, they began making rose water using traditional distillation methods, typically employed to make alcohol. To date, they have sold over 1,000 bottles, and production is still ongoing.
But since then, they have also begun growing crops other than roses, including local crops like sanai phool, or sun hemp, and beng saag, or brahmi, as well as cash crops like rosemary and cherry tomatoes. “Roses are an expensive crop that also require heavy chemical pesticides to grow,” Abhishek said. “We also realised we can’t call ourselves sustainable while only practicing monoculture.”
When I visited on March 12, they were in the process of phasing out the cultivation of roses on some parts of the land. As we walked around, we heard a loud noise of tiny birds chirping. “Since we’ve changed crops, birds and butterflies have started coming here,” Manisha said with a smile.
Abhishek and Manisha noted that they had also made efforts to popularise some of these indigenous products by incorporating them into food served at a restaurant they set up as part of The Open Field. “The idea is to promote what is native to Jharkhand,” Abhishek said. “People in the cities won’t consume it unless they become familiar with it.” The restaurant offers customers platters, which change depending on the seasonal availability of different produce.
The duo explained that by exploring a wide range of traditional food, they hoped to build a strong customer base for it. “We would like to standardise Adivasi food, so it can be commercialised and also be preserved that way,” said Manisha.”
At the same time, Open Field continues to grow cash crops such as cherry tomatoes and rosemary, which, Abhishek noted, are in demand in the hotel, restaurant and catering industry. The company also seeks to share knowledge with other agriculturists – it collaborates with around thirty farmers in Torpa and Latehar, to encourage them to try growing new crops, and helps them sell their produce.
The two also envisioned the farm as a space for agrotourism – a kind of place, their brochure explains, where visitors feel like they are visiting their “nani ka gaon”, or maternal grandmother’s village. At the same time, they also seek to offer modern facilities – next to the former polyhouse is a swimming pool built using the reed bed system, which uses natural filtration to ensure that water stays clean. Abhishek explained that they wanted to create “an ecosystem” that was scalable and replicable. “This is a demonstration unit to show what we’re growing, a place for community engagement where local villagers can engage with the farm, a store where we sell our products, a restaurant to experience the food, and all sorts of workshops for knowledge sharing like pottery and cooking.”
Since 2018, the farm has seen more than 31,000 visitors, the duo said. While most customers visit from Ranchi, they have also received tourists from Delhi, Kolkata and Bengaluru. Though tourism is the farm’s main source of income, it is only in the monsoon and winter months that the weather is cool enough to draw tourists. Thus, through the year, Open Field also carries out other kinds of commercial activities, such as the manufacture of ghee candles, kombuchas and pet food, which are marketed and sold across the country. In the evenings, the duo also run a community engagement initiative, named “shaam ki paathshala”, or evening school, under which local children visit the centre to learn English and photography.
A key challenge that the Oraons have faced pertains to financial regulations in the state – current laws in Jharkhand prohibit Scheduled Tribes from mortgaging their land for loans, thus preventing many from borrowing money to set up businesses. Though this rule that has come up for reconsideration by the state government, for now it remains in force. “A key challenge has been liquid funds,” Manisha said. “The government is supportive towards those wanting to do business, they have a lot of schemes. But they are mostly geared towards livelihood creation, and not wealth generation.”
Another problem they have faced has been a lack of manpower. “Most people prefer migrating and working outside the state rather than working for their own community here,” she said.
They have also struggled against people’s perceptions of them, and their views of Adivasi entrepreneurs. They recounted that in several instances, those they encountered had expressed shock that they were Adivasi and owned a business. One time, Manisha recounted, they had visited a government office that promotes different kinds of produce to give a presentation about Open Field’s work. An officer they met expressed shock that the two spoke in English, and asked them how they were fluent in the language if they were Adivasi. He also asked them to show him their caste certificates; eventually, the officer did not enlist their products on the government platform.
But the couple were undeterred and approached another government department with their presentation. Since then, they have received support with promoting their products from the state government’s tourism and industries departments.
The two have high hopes for the future and view entrepreneurship as necessary for the upliftment of the community. “I am a stern believer in capitalism,” said Abhishek. “Until the time tribals become capitalists, other people will come and use our resources and we will only remain as their tools. The sooner we evolve, enter the market economy and occupy commanding positions, the more our community will become economically strengthened.,”
