The BRICS food menu row is a political slugfest between the BJP and Congress over an all-vegetarian gala dinner served to visiting BRICS leaders — dishes like Khumb Galouti and Millet Pulao took centre stage, Congress mocked the government for turning a routine diplomatic dinner into a publicity exercise, and the BJP hit back saying “our guests relished Indian veg cuisine.” Strip away the outrage and there’s barely a rupee figure in sight.
Key Takeaways
- The BRICS food menu row erupted after Congress accused the government of politicising a vegetarian gala dinner menu for optics.
- The BJP defended the spread, saying delegates “relished Indian veg cuisine,” pointing to dishes like Khumb Galouti and Millet Pulao.
- Back-of-envelope math shows a gala dinner’s catering bill is a rounding error next to what India actually spends hosting a global summit.
- The real money story — India’s multi-crore millet push — is getting zero airtime while the menu fight hogs the headlines.
What Sparked the BRICS Food Menu Row?
Here’s the sequence, stripped of spin. The government served an all-vegetarian spread to BRICS delegates and promoted it as a showcase of Indian hospitality and regional ingredients. Congress leaders weren’t impressed — they framed the promotion as theatre, more interested in optics than substance.
The BJP wasn’t going to let that sit. Party spokespersons hit back, insisting the feedback from guests was genuine and that turning a state dinner into a political football says more about Congress than about the menu itself.
That’s the entire BRICS food menu row in one paragraph. No scam, no leaked contract, no audited bill. Just two parties arguing over whether a plate of food counts as diplomacy or drama.
What Was Actually On the Menu?
Reports on the BRICS food menu highlighted a handful of standout dishes built around India’s regional and millet-forward cooking. Two names kept coming up: Khumb Galouti, a mushroom-based take on the classic Lucknowi galouti kebab, and Millet Pulao, built on grains India has been pushing hard as a health and export story since the International Year of Millets in 2023.
| Dish | Base Ingredient | Why It Made the Cut |
| Khumb Galouti | Mushroom | Vegetarian reworking of a famous non-veg Awadhi kebab — familiar flavour, no meat |
| Millet Pulao | Millets (Shree Anna) | Ties directly into India’s millet promotion campaign on the world stage |
The pattern is obvious even from two dishes: this wasn’t random catering. It was curated to say “India, vegetarian, regional, healthy” in one sitting — which is exactly the kind of messaging that invites political scrutiny.
Is the BRICS Food Menu Row Actually About Money?
This is where I get skeptical. Every time a state dinner turns into a headline, someone implies it’s wasteful — extravagant catering funded by taxpayers while other things go unfunded. Nobody in this BRICS food menu row has actually put a number on the table. So let’s do the math ourselves.
India’s most comparable recent exercise is the 2023 G20 presidency. The government told Parliament that total hosting expenditure across the full G20 year — venues, security, logistics, delegate hospitality, everything — came in at roughly Rs 4,100 crore. That’s not one dinner. That’s an entire year of summits across multiple cities.
Now scale down to one gala dinner for a BRICS leaders’ meet. Even generous industry estimates for VVIP-grade catering — the kind with layered security clearances, protocol staff and bespoke menus — run somewhere between Rs 3,000 and Rs 10,000 a plate, according to figures event-catering trade publications typically cite for high-security state functions. Put fifty covers on that dinner table, including delegation heads and support staff, and you’re looking at a catering bill of roughly Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 5 lakh.
Compare that to the Rs 4,100 crore backdrop. The dinner is somewhere around 0.001% of what a full presidency year costs. You could argue about menu choices, about vegetarian versus non-vegetarian optics, about whether Khumb Galouti was the right symbolic dish — but you cannot honestly argue this is where India’s summit money is being wasted. The math simply doesn’t support the outrage.
Where’s the Real Money Story?
If you actually want a rupee figure worth arguing about, skip the dinner plate and look at the millet push behind it. In December 2022, the Union Cabinet approved a dedicated Sub-Mission on Millets under the BRICS-era push for India’s regional grain diplomacy, with a central outlay reported at around Rs 800 crore spread across financial years 2022-23 to 2025-26. That is real, budgeted, recurring money — not a single evening’s catering tab.
So when a dish like Millet Pulao lands on a BRICS food menu, it isn’t there by accident. It’s the edible tip of a multi-year, multi-crore agricultural marketing campaign. That’s the number Congress could have gone after if the goal was genuine scrutiny rather than a soundbite.
A Simple India Comparison
Here’s the local angle that puts this in perspective. India’s midday meal scheme (PM POSHAN) feeds over 11 crore schoolchildren on a cost of roughly Rs 5-8 per child per meal, per government norms revised in recent years. One BRICS gala dinner, at the higher end of Rs 5 lakh, could fund midday meals for roughly 60,000-100,000 children for a single day.
That’s a genuinely uncomfortable comparison — but it cuts against both sides of the BRICS food menu row equally. It’s not evidence of scandalous waste (Rs 5 lakh is still tiny against a Rs 4,100 crore hosting budget), and it’s not evidence that Congress’s outrage was misplaced either, since nobody actually raised this comparison. It just shows how little either party bothered with real numbers before shouting at each other.
Why Does the Vegetarian Framing Matter Politically?
The BJP’s insistence that guests “relished Indian veg cuisine” isn’t just about taste. Vegetarianism carries domestic political weight in India, tied to cultural and religious identity in a way that non-veg catering doesn’t. Framing a global summit’s menu as proudly all-vegetarian is a deliberate signal to a domestic audience, not just a hospitality choice for foreign guests.
Congress’s pushback, in turn, reads less like a critique of the food and more like a refusal to let that signal go unchallenged. Which is fair game in politics — but it’s a fight over symbolism, not over spending. Conflating the two is where most of the noise around this BRICS food menu row comes from.
FAQ
What is the BRICS food menu row about?
It’s a political dispute between the BJP and Congress over an all-vegetarian gala dinner menu served to BRICS delegates, after Congress accused the government of politicising the menu and the BJP defended it.
What dishes were served at the BRICS gala dinner?
Reported dishes included Khumb Galouti, a mushroom-based vegetarian kebab, and Millet Pulao, built around India’s millet promotion campaign.
Did Congress question the cost of the BRICS food menu?
Reports frame Congress’s criticism as being about political optics and showcasing, not a specific costed allegation of financial waste.
How much does a state banquet like this actually cost?
There’s no official per-dinner figure released for this event. Based on industry catering estimates for VVIP functions, a single gala dinner for a few dozen guests would typically run in the low lakhs of rupees — a fraction of India’s overall summit-hosting budgets, which have run into thousands of crores in past presidency years.
Why does India keep promoting millets at diplomatic events?
India has backed a formal, budgeted millet promotion push (Shree Anna) since the 2023 International Year of Millets, aimed at boosting both domestic health outcomes and export demand — so millet dishes at global events aren’t accidental, they’re policy in edible form.
Conclusion
The BRICS food menu row generated plenty of heat and almost no numbers. Run the math, and the dinner itself is financially trivial — the real money question is sitting quietly in India’s multi-crore millet budget, which nobody bothered to argue about. Next time a menu becomes a headline, ask for the rupee figure before you pick a side.