Bengal’s mine of Sweet facing financial crisis
South 24 Pargana(Bohudu): Bengal’s famous ‘nolen gud’ and Puff Rice makers are against the government for not getting their money which they deserve and promised by them after looking at their financial crisis and hard work.
Bohudu is village in South 24 Pargana is located just after Joy Nagar. This is specially known for its famous Nolen Gud which is the main ingredient for Bengali Sweets made of but this village is known by very few amounts of people in Bengal. Not only ‘Nolen Gud’ but also, they are known for Puff Rice.
West Bengal Government had planned so many schemes for Bengal’s villages like they will give them proper shelter, make schools for children education and also financial support. So that they can able to live a better lifestyle but villagers did not get a single thing.
In Bohudu people were also facing the same problem. They also did not get a single support from the Government. They are leading a very poor lifestyle. Then also for preserving the heritage they were making Nolen Gud and puff rice.
Nolen Gud is basically a sweet liquid which is made the juice of date tree. The process is long. They have to start work from night. At first, they hang a pot on the top the date tree by making a cut on a particular place from where a liquid object comes out and store in that pot slowly. The process takes whole night. Then next day on early morning before the sunrise the pots are bring down, they collect all the liquid from the pot in an aluminum container and stir for an hour, so that the sweetness mixes in all the liquid. They don’t use any other metal because other metal damage the strength of that juice. After stirring for an hour shift, they shift the liquid into another container and then put the container on fire for heating. During heating they add little bit of honey make it thick. Then it became ready to manufacture sweet.
Pot hanging to collect date juice
Pot containing date juices
Nolen Gud is ready to pack
The people who give effort to make this heavenly thing are live in hell where is no food, no proper house to live and their children became uneducated for not having a proper system of education. They live their lifestyle by selling this Nolen gud to the sweetshop owner but their also they cheated by them.
Nooruddin Mondal, who was one of those gud maker said, “Sweet shop owner Mr. Shyam Sundar take 20 kg of Gud for making sweet everyday but they do not pay proper price. When I stop supply them gud Shyam Sundar made a connection with BDO and threaten me to leave this place if I stop supply gud”.
He also said, “BDO promises us that they will give certain amount of money from profit which I did not get till now”.
On other corner of the village there is another group of people who make puff rice. Other the Money, shelter and education they are facing another kind of issue. They make puff rice with the help of machine and the factory is owned by some other person. The machine they use for making puff rice became very old and anytime accident can happen.
The workers are demanding for new machine, other than that they are also demanding for increasing their salary but the owner is not responding to them. Shankari Koyal, a worker in that puff rice factory said, “I was working here from last 13 years and still I get only Rs 3000. We demand for increase the salary but owner do not listening to us. I have two children and my husband is jobless. It become very difficult to run our home”.
The process of puff rice making is also interesting. It is just simple as making popcorn. The machine they use is designed like a that on one side rice grain are insert into it and in between there is fire in which rice grain are burst out and convert into puff rice and at the end the puff rice are coming out. Then after removing the dust it become ready pack.
Bablu Das, another worker in puff rice factory said, “I work here during the daytime for six hours and from evening to Night I drive auto which help me to run my family. I have five members in my family. Other than me my mother, my wife and my two son in my home. This low salary after working here is not sufficient for us to survive”.
In that factory there are total 18 people working out of which seven were women and everyone has the same demand of increasing their salary. The owner of the factory do not try understand their problems. With that low salary workers are living their livelihood with the hope that someday their salary will increase so that they can live a better life.
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