New Delhi, March 19 -- Recently, while working on a story on farmer-owned companies, I came across an ancient variety of rice. The heirloom rice variety, known as Kala Namak comes from eastern Uttar Pradesh. It's also known as Buddha rice: the legend goes that Lord Buddha distributed seeds of this rice to his devotees as a blessing, after attaining Nirvana. It's an aromatic, short-grain variety with a low glycaemic index, making it suitable for diabetics. Another positive of this rice is that it contains 3-times the protein content of regular varieties (about 17%). India has lost many traditional rice cultivars following the green revolution launched in the mid-1960s, which focused on increasing cereal production by adopting high-yielding...