Joram Aniya, a member of India’s policy think tank NITI Aayog, addressed a lecture in Takyel, Manipur, on 28 September. The talk drew academics, students and officials from across the north-east’s research institutions. The Institute of Bioresources and Sustainable Development organised the talk. Aniya said modern science should support traditional knowledge systems, not displace them. “The objective should be to support the traditional system rather than replace it,” she told the audience, gathered to discuss how biotechnology and traditional practice might work side by side.
Aniya is an academician, writer and folklorist, recognised for her contributions to preserving Nyishi culture. She drew on the Apatani agricultural system of her home state, Arunachal Pradesh, as her central example. The Apatani wet-rice cultivation method was developed without mechanised irrigation. It relies on an intricate network of bamboo channels to manage water across sloped paddy fields, without pumps or engineered concrete. The method has drawn research interest for decades as a model of sustainable terrace farming adapted to hill terrain.
Younger generations are stepping away
Her warning centred on a generational shift already under way. Younger people across the north-east are moving toward urban employment, away from traditional agricultural and resource-management practices. That shift risks severing the knowledge transfer that has kept these systems alive for generations. Aniya argued that careful scientific intervention could ease that transition without erasing the underlying practices. Biotechnology, for instance, could document and reinforce traditional seed varieties and soil techniques, rather than replacing them wholesale with imported methods.
The lecture drew attention from other outlets covering the region. Manipur-based reporting framed the discussion around India’s “Viksit Bharat 2047” development vision, the government’s long-term growth roadmap, and whether it leaves space for indigenous knowledge systems. Aniya’s remarks suggested a middle path: scientific validation for traditional methods, rather than a binary choice between tradition and technology. Separate coverage of the same theme in Manipur noted how institutes such as IBSD increasingly see themselves as a bridge between laboratory science and village-level practice.
A regional debate with deep roots
The north-east’s patchwork of ethnic communities has long drawn researchers studying sustainable resource management. Arunachal Pradesh’s Apatani and Nyishi groups and Manipur’s own distinct agricultural traditions all offer low-input farming models suited to fragile terrain, steep slopes and heavy monsoon rainfall. Mechanised plains agriculture handles those conditions poorly, and imported irrigation techniques, designed for flatter ground, often struggle to replicate them without heavy capital investment. Researchers studying hill farming elsewhere in Asia have drawn similar conclusions about the limits of transplanting lowland methods wholesale.
Aniya’s appointment to NITI Aayog reflects a broader push to bring regional and indigenous perspectives into national planning bodies historically dominated by economists and engineers. As a Nyishi folklorist with an academic background, rather than a career bureaucrat, her presence on the body has itself become a talking point among north-eastern commentators. Many have long argued that national planning gives their region’s distinct knowledge systems too little weight. Planners, they say, tend to treat the north-east as a security and infrastructure concern, rather than a source of its own expertise.
Her message in Manipur echoes a wider debate playing out in food and heritage circles elsewhere in the Global South. In Indonesia, a recent gastronomy festival framed regional foodways as living cultural heritage, rather than a backdrop for tourism alone. Whether that framing translates into funding for the north-east’s own traditional systems is still an open question. Much will depend on how far NITI Aayog carries Aniya’s argument, and whether state governments follow with budget commitments of their own.
