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Paper short abstract:

Firstly, this paper argues that recently surfaced agribusiness models in the Eastern Himalayas have successfully commodified ethno-cultural local foods. Secondly, they have used digitalisation to reach migrant customers in Indian cities and Nepali-Tibetan diaspora outside India.

Paper long abstract:

The Eastern Himalayas have their own distinct food recipes and traditions. However, prices of agricultural produce in Darjeeling and Sikkim have continued to remain minimal contributing to the exploitation of farmers. With ethnographic fieldwork in 2021 as a methodology to collect data, this paper argues that recently surfaced agribusiness models have used digital means to reach customers across India and abroad. In the first section, I argue that farming and agriculture in villages of Darjeeling is socio-economically unviable where farmers remain marginalised from their own produce. In the second section, I show how Rimbick Fresh, a local agribusiness has commodified ethno-cultural heritage food transforming local foods into economically viable products now sold under carefully crafted labels. In the third section, I argue that since a large number of youths work outside the region, this agribusiness has resorted to digitalisation of its produce, selling packaged ethno-cultural food in online stores, helping it to reach to migrant customers in Indian cities and Nepali-Tibetan diaspora outside India. By following the “social life of products” (Appadurai 1988) of packaged ethno-cultural heritage food as it circulates around India and abroad, I show how digitalisation helps this agribusiness reach customers using group specific notions of food heritage to profit in capitalist arenas. In doing so, they join other capitalist producers who use regional identities and aspects of heritage to construct and market cultural productions in selling authentic food in regional and global markets (Cavanaugh and Shankar, 2014).