By M. Atif Ismail
MULTAN, Jul 14 (APP): Like many other food items, the homemade mango pickle, once a source of earning for village women, is gradually diminishing from our society after its mass production by commercial entities.
In every mango season, women in different parts of the country especially rural areas, used to prepare this product for their own use and selling to other people for earning some living. But, different mango pickle producing companies gradually took over this small scale business leaving thousands rural women attached to this business since decades, jobless.
Besides viewing it as a small business, Mango pickle is also a vital component of our diet being an additional cuisine and appetizer as well as taste developer. It offers health benefits with antioxidants, vitamins and minerals like fenugreek, mustard seeds to support skin, vision, digestion, neutralize free radicals, stimulate appetite, improve nutrient absorption and boost immunity.
“I liked mango pickle from my childhood. We used to see our grandmother preparing it at home. Besides mangoes as raw material she used to add oil, kalongi and other items to make it tasty,” said Tahir Mahmood, a middle aged man. “We used to interestingly see her chopping the green mangoes, removing the seed and putting the eatable component in a jar and then adding oil and other items into it. This way, they used to preserve it for the whole year.”
Even in recent past our rural women, had good command in preparing pickle and using special techniques to preserving it and saving from weather effects. But, most of citizens, especially with urban background, might be ignorant of this art of preparing homemade pickle.
Besides using it for their personal use, the mango pickle was also gifted to relatives and sold out locally to earn some money.
“Pickle is one of the spicy, nutritious and cheapest cuisines in our country. Our rural women were once much trained in preparing it and making it tasty and nutritious by adding Kalonji, meathi, long and dar-cheeni into it,” said a farmer Shahid Hameed Bhutta.
“It was also a source of earning for rural women. But, its domestic preparation has gradually diminished after commercial firms started its mass production,” he said and opined to promote domestic pickle producing as a cottage industry. “The women should be imparted specialized training on modern techniques of preparing, packing, branding and marketing homemade pickle.”
Shahid said pickle has also immense potential for export to Europe, America and countries in Middle East. “If Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) comes forward and provide facilities to rural women for preparing mango pickle, it may enhance our exports and make poor families to earn their living.”
As life goes on year after year, the elderly people still remember the taste of homemade pickle, their mothers and grandmothers used to prepare once. Even today we can preserve this tradition by educating people on its preparation for their own use and selling in markets.
The practice of making pickle for household consumption, usually carried out by women, could be extended to small-scale commercial production, enabling women to generate a small income from rejected fruit and reduce postharvest waste and losses.
“A large number of immature mangoes fall down due to wind storms. Such mangoes can be used in pickle preparation and help save growers from losses,” said a farmer, Malik Arif. “If production of pickle is commercialized at small scale, it may reduce crop losses and generate economic opportunities for female entrepreneurs in rural areas.”
Advocating promotion of local level pickle production is not simply for the sake of an argument as there are success stories where domestic pickle producers tried this business on small level and prospered.
“In the past our mothers and grandmothers, used to prepare pickle for domestic use only. But, later relatives and neighbors started offering them money for their product,” said Ejaz Ahmed a shopkeeper in Burewala. “Their rising demand encouraged us and we started preparing it on commercial basis and soon it turned into a profit earning business.”
He said pickle is equally popular among the rich and poor. “The poor, especially daily wagers and farm workers use it as their daily diet as it costs them very nominal for being domestically produced.”
As pickle is a commonly used product by poor, middle class and rich families, its consumption continues to grow. But, now its dividend is grabbed by big commercial firms and the poor rural women who were once the main author of this product were left idle.
Not simply the mango pickle, but there were many other products, the rural women once used to prepare domestically to earn their living. But, all this activity vanished with dying cottage industry culture that left many of our domestic workers jobless and badly affected our economy.
Therefore, it is urgently needed to revive cottage industry to help out poor workers and farmers to establish small scale business and earn some money. It would greatly help in creating business opportunities for them and alleviate poverty from our country.
APP/atf/maz (APP Feature Service)