After Strawberry, Jaggery Festival, now Kalanamak Rice Festival in UP

Lucknow: After grand success of Strawberry of Jhansi and the Jaggery Festival in Lucknow, the three-day ‘Kalanamak Rice Festival’ will be held in Siddharthnagar from Saturday.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, in his sustained efforts of creating new income opportunities for the farmers, has stressed upon to promote localised produce and provide them market.

The CM will inaugurate it virtually at 11.30 am on Saturday. Kala Namak Rice, grown in this region, is One District One Product (ODOP) of some Eastern UP districts.

People coming to the festival will be able to taste the dishes made with Kalanamak rice and can also purchase from Kalanamak paddy seeds and rice stalls. They will be made aware of the historical, nutritional and scientific merits of Kala Namak Rice as well as imparting them the knowledge about its cultivation.

The event is being organised in order to promote, market and branding of selected products as ODOP under ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’ and ‘Local for Vocal’ campaign. At the Kalanamak Rice Festival

Various dishes of Kalanamak rice will be displayed. The festival will host various stalls of Kala Namak rice dishes like kheer, pulao, cumin rice, rice, lentils, vegetable, rice-chickpeas, poha, khichdi, fara, idli etc, officials here on Friday said.

Colorful cultural programs will also be organised in the Kalanamak Rice Festival in which local artists and students will get an opportunity to showcase their talent. In this program, progressive farmers, FPOs and self-help groups will also be provided with information related to the cultivation and processing of this product.

Kalanamak rice is revered as Buddha’s Mahaprasad. Kalanamak having geographical indication (GI) tag. It is grown not only in Siddharthanagar alone, but districts with similar agro climatic zones Gorakhpur, Deoria, Kushinagar, Maharajganj, Santakbirnagar, Basti, Bahraich, Balrampur, Gonda and Shravasti also have it as ODOP. A few months ago, the list of ODOPs released by the central government in relation to farming has been included in Siddharthnagar along with the rest of the districts.

Earlier, the Chief Minister had inaugurated the Strawberry Festival in Jhansi virtually and the two-day Gur Festival held in Lucknow. Dragon Fruit Festival is also slated to be organised.

Additional Chief Secretary, Department of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and Export Promotion, Dr. Navneet Sehgal said here on Friday that the government desired to organise such festivals of all ODOP agri-products which can be processed. This will establish these products more strongly as a brand. If the demand increases, the income of the farmers will increase. The aim of the Yogi government is also to increase the income of farmers and for which, the CM has been personally engaged since the first day of forming the government four years ago.

“His efforts to have such festivals will certainly speed up this process of change,” said Mr Sehgal. (UNI)