World Wetlands Day 2026: Promoting Chilika red rice can help enhance food and livelihood security around India’s first Ramsar Site
The Chilika red rice grows in the wetlands around the Chilika Lake in Odisha. Locally known as bankia or bankei, the rice is flood-tolerant and helps marginalised local farmers eke a living in all kinds of weather conditions.
Among the farmers are Haramohan Samantari and Bheema Swain of Mangalajodi village, who grow the rice on 2 acres and 3 acres of land they own respectively.
They grow the rice organically and use traditional methods to harvest and the yield depends on the weather conditions. The yield on 2 acres is around 13 quintals and Samantari earns around Rs 8,000-Rs 10,000 from selling around 2-3 quintals. The rest of the harvest is used at home. Swain harvests around 24 quintals and earns Rs 20,000 from the 8-10 quintals he sells. Like Samantari, he too uses the remaining at home.
Red rice is cultivated on land situated along the water channels that connect the villages on the banks of the Chilika to the open lake. Bankia grows up to a height of 6 feet and provides habitat to native catfishes and snakeheads and native birds like moorhens. No pesticide or fertiliser is used for its cultivation as they would get washed away with monsoon floods, when the paddy is grown. Because of this feature, they are also climate-resilient as they have the ability to withstand unseasonal heavy rainfall close to the harvest time when most high-yield varieties would rot.
Despite these benefits, more farmers are not interested in growing Bankia as there is not much awareness about this rice. Swain and Samantari are two of the four farmers who grow it in the village, informs Arya Narayan Swain, who works as a project officer with the Kolkata-based non-profit Human & Environment Alliance League (HEAL) which is trying to promote Bankia.
One reason for the farmers’ disinterest is the fact that the quality of the wetlands is degrading according to people who live and work in the area. This is despite the fact that Chilika Lake is India’s first Ramsar Site. Though data by the National Wetland Inventory and Assessment shows an increase in number and area under wetlands between 2010 and 2018 (from 78,440 wetlands covering 6.91 lakh ha or 0.691 mha in 2010 to 4.21 lakh wetlands covering 8.36 lakh ha or 0.836 mha in 2018), according to Tiasa Adhya, founder of the Fishing Cat Project, the wetland parts of the Chilika are shrinking drastically due to proliferation of aquaculture farms harvesting freshwater carps and prawns.
“We have lost nearly 50 per cent of the seasonally inundated areas of the wetlands due to this,” she says. More and more farmers lease off their lands to businessmen who convert the wetlands for intensive carp culture, says Adhya. These fish farms release pollutants into the Chilika. Sometimes, invasive species like nylon Tika and hybrid catfish are released into the Chilika during floods, which is highly detrimental for native fishes. “We want to market the red rice in urban centres of the country in the hope to make its farming lucrative and to encourage this age-old wise-use practice. This will benefit farmers, wetland biodiversity and the ecosystem,” she says. The rice is rich in fibre and essential minerals and has anti-inflammatory properties. Its low glycemic index makes it suitable for consumption even for diabetics. The variety is rich in iron and folic acid, apart from the anthocyanin which is a common characteristic of all red rice.
Both groups hope that popularity of the indigenous rice would create awareness about the fishing cat which was declared the lake’s ambassador in 2020. The rice and fishing cat live in synergy in the wetland – the flood-tolerant rice provides seasonal habitat to the cats.
A resilient wetland would provide additional benefits, especially food security.
Hema Lata Behera, who also lives in the Mangalajodi village, regularly harvests the madaranga plant (Alternanthera sessilis) around the lake and uses it as a green leafy vegetable. The people in the village also forage for green leafy vegetables like kalama (Ipomoea aquatica), kacharanga (pumpkin) from the saturated land.
A study published in the International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology in 2020 identified 25 macrophytes that are used for food and livelihood by the local communities around Chilika. The researchers found that 11 of these were used as food, of which most are used as leafy vegetables such as Alternanthera philoxeroides (madaranga), Nymphoides indicia (kumudini), Alternanthera sessilis (kolamsago), Commelina benghalensis (Ransiri) and Sphaeranthus indicus (murisa). Additionally, the bulbils of Aponogeton natans (jhechu) are eaten raw or are roasted and consumed as vegetables and starchy seeds. Even the flowering spike and young shoots are used as a vegetable. Other plants had medicinal properties, were used as fodder or provided raw material for mats, roofs and brooms
Similalrly, the ‘Assessment of Tree Species Diversity in Chilika Lake Ecosystem of Odisha, India’ published in the International Research Journal of Environmental Sciences in November 2016 identified a total of 69 tree species in Chilika. Many of these trees such as coconut, jamun and date provide fruits.
The role that wetlands play in food security is often missed as indicated by a recent report by Delhi-based think tank Centre for Science and Environment. The theme of this year’s World Wetland Day (February 2, 2026) is “Wetlands and traditional knowledge: Celebrating cultural heritage”. This seems to be a good start for bucking the trend.
To find out more about CSE's work on food systems based in wetlands, please click here


