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A recipe for success: Empowering women sweetly
Call it a recipe for success or a recipe for pride. A sweet delicacy, which was not known to many a few years back, has changed the lives of hundreds of women who are living with a sense of pride and identity.
Rajahmundry: Call it a recipe for success or a recipe for pride. A sweet delicacy, which was not known to many a few years back, has changed the lives of hundreds of women who are living with a sense of pride and identity.
This recipe for success has tagged the nondescript Athreya Puram in East Godavari on the world map. Putharekulu, which is rice foil sweet with origins in Athreya Puram, has become the favourite for the people across the globe. The recipe has empowered the women of this village socially and economically.
Athreya Puram women no more depend on their husbands to raise their children. They can manage their family with the money earned by making putharekulu. Nearly one thousand women make an earning from Rs 300 to Rs 600 per day.
The growing demand for putharekulu has kept women busy in this cottage industry-like enterprise making them not to look for alternative employment. Even Dwacra groups and bankers are pitching in to help them financially. Bankers, who normally hesitate to provide loans, show keen interest in sanctioning them to these women who are known for prompt re-payment. Kondeti Lakshmi, who has three daughters, said that she was lucky to have born in Athreya Puram. Putharekulu making has helped her raise her children.
Nowadays, no function or marriage concludes without putharekulu on the menu. This preference has made the village flooded with orders as far as from Chennai, New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Hyderabad and as well as from the US, the UK and Australia as this sweet can be preserved for more than three weeks without refrigeration.
As far as the making of putharekulu is concerned, women use ‘Jaya 1235’variety, which gives the required stickiness. Sugar, jaggery, elaichi, cashew nuts and ghee are the other ingredients to go into the folds of the “paper sweet”. Now health conscious patrons are preferring putharekulu sprinkled with jaggery.Enterprising Surisetty Satyavati has been instrumental in giving boost to the marketing of Athreya Puram putharekulu.
Her clients include film stars Mohan Babu and Srihari as well as politicians like KVP Ramachandra Rao and Botcha Satyannarayana. She still remembers vividly how film star Srihari wanted her to prepare putharekulu for the marriages of his two children. Speaking to The Hans India, Satyavati said that the sweet is a boon to Athreya Puram. “Women of this village are blessed as they get employment everyday and they are able to provide quality education to their children and accumulate assets on their own,” she said. Many women who are not as enterprising as Satyavati work for her, but get paid decently. They don’t have to come to her place for work. They take the required quantity of rice and get the rice foils prepared for which Satyavati pays.
Another aspect of this village enterprise is giving boost to subsidiary businesses like sugar, jaggery, rice and spices. The economy of the village rely on the power of the women and communal harmony can be observed in this villages as people from all castes and creeds involve in one activity, that is making of putharekulu.
By:Samson Raj
