All women brigade Fighting against unhygienic
By Dipanjana Das Gupta
Most of the cities in the world have street food culture. The city of Joy is not exceptional in that case. From esplanade to expanded city sector V the footpaths are mostly occupied by street food vendors. But often those street food vendors comes under the scanner of civic authority,because of food adulteration. The department often slammed them with legal paper. But this is no more; street food vendors of Kolkata is no more with unhygienic food. you will find hygienic food in Kolkata itself. The Kolkata street food vendor’s is adopting the hygienic food culture with the help Street Food Project Kolkata (SFPK) initiated by Joy gopalpur Gram Vikas kendra (JGVK) and Gana Unnayan Parshad (GUP) supported by Innoaid (Denmark).
After a rigorous practice the food vendors are using the hygienic spices in their food, purified water disposal paper plates. But the story not ends here the spices they are using is not the cheap rated spices sold in the market or the dishes are not any big company made paper plates. All this products are coming from Sundarban, South 24 parganas of Bengal made by the young women of Sundarban. Young energetic ladies like Sujala, Basanti, Sharama, always love to plunge in to challenges.
The people from largest Delta of the world Sundarban the place of “hungry Tide” had faced many odds in their life. But it never let them down from their spirit. The women of Sundarban as stubborn as the delta.They are the women from Bengal’s most difficult zone Sundarban. The homemakers mostly uneducated, hardly two or three women among them know to write their name. But their inner zeal always pushed them to go ahead. Many times they visited Kolkata had food from streets but the unhygienic food always had pinches in their mind. The street Food Project team initiated several Village Committee meeting where they expressed about the spice making and paper plate production. After participating in several meetings two Self help groups came forward and took the proposal to produce spices and Paper Plates. One is “Ma Kali” and another is Matribandana for the street food vendors of Kolkata. They started taking initiative accordingly. They went Burrabazar bought spice raw materials brought it in the village, grind it and did the final packaging. they are now produce 4 spices which is essential in Indian foods, turmeric, red chilly, Cumin and coriander. Now they have 280 customer in Sector V area (Kolkata) which is increasing day by day. they physically go to the market everyday once in a week and sell it in the urban market with collaboration of another group in urban area named Disha.
Apart from Ma Kali the second group Sundarban Birinchibari Matri Bandana producing Paper Plate. The manual machine installed by Street Food Project Kolkata (SFPK) team. the street food team members also trained them with trainer and helped they to buy the raw materials from Kolkata Bazar. The young mothers go to buy raw papers from all over Sundarban to Baithakkhana Bazar Kolkata almost 76 kilometers and brought it in their village and produce paper plates out of it. Though they got immense help from SFPK team but their effort is unforgettable. Those plates they sell it in rural market as well as in urban markets.
The time has been changed the young rustic women are no longer called illiterate idle woman. Sujala a mid 30 lady from Matribandana group said our fight is not only against unhygienic but to eradicate the By this project they at least learn to write their names. Shedding all shyness at home the all women brigade moving forward leaving homesickness behind.
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