Two farm products from opposite ends of India — makhana from Purnia, Bihar and arhar dal from Kalaburagi, Karnataka — are finding buyers beyond Indian borders, and Union Food Processing Minister Chirag Paswan wants the country to take note. Responding to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Mann Ki Baat address on Sunday, October 25, 2026, Paswan positioned the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MOFPI) as the engine turning local agricultural produce into globally competitive exports.

What PM Modi said in Mann Ki Baat — and why Paswan is amplifying it

In his monthly radio address, Prime Minister Modi highlighted the growing confidence among Indians in homegrown products and the positive momentum of the 'Vocal for Local' campaign. He specifically noted that Indian products are no longer confined to domestic shelves — they are reaching global markets. Paswan echoed and extended that message, citing Purnia's makhana reaching Greece and Kalaburagi's arhar dal reaching the Maldives as concrete proof points of that globalisation.

The minister framed MOFPI's role as creating the infrastructure that makes this possible: 'प्रसंस्करण, आधुनिक पैकेजिंग, मूल्य संवर्धन और बेहतर मार्केटिंग' — processing, modern packaging, value addition, and better marketing. In other words, the bridge between a farmer's field and a foreign shelf.

Purnia's makhana and Kalaburagi's pulses — the regional story behind the headline

Purnia district in Bihar is one of India's most recognised makhana-producing belts, with the aquatic crop long associated with ceremonial and nutritional use. Kalaburagi in northern Karnataka is a major pulse-growing district, significant enough that its agricultural identity is tied to arhar dal production. Both products carry strong regional identities — exactly the kind that benefit from Geographical Indication branding and export packaging investment.

That push sits within a broader policy architecture: the Atmanirbhar Bharat package of 2020 prioritised local manufacturing and agricultural value chains, while the PM Formalisation of Micro food processing Enterprises (PM FME) scheme, also launched in 2020, extended credit and technical assistance to micro-processing units for branding and upgradation. These are the upstream interventions that Paswan argues are now yielding downstream export results.

Processing, packaging, and farmer prosperity — the MOFPI pitch

The minister's core argument is straightforward: post-harvest losses in India have historically eaten into farm incomes, and the fix is not just better farming but better processing. Modern packaging that extends shelf life, value-added formats that command premium prices, and marketing pipelines that connect districts like Purnia and Kalaburagi to overseas buyers — these, Paswan says, are 'important steps towards farmer prosperity and an Aatmanirbhar Bharat.'

The Commerce Ministry's agricultural export data and any new state-level MoUs for processed food clusters will be the clearest near-term test of whether the on-ground results match the ministerial messaging.

The signal from both the PM and his food-processing minister is the same: Vocal for Local was never just a domestic consumption campaign — it was always a stepping stone to making 'Local' a global brand.