Pollution turns Agra petha bitter
Vishal Sharma
New Delhi/ Agra. Even as the Agra petha industry faces growing competition from the units being set up in other cities of UP like Lucknow and Kanpur by migrating petha workers of Agra, the UP Pollution Control Board (UPCCB) is coming down hard on the units functioning in Agra for not having adopted LPG-based stoves, threatening to seal down the units if they continued to use coal in their manufacturing process.
Talking to Business Standard, Ashok Kumar Tiwari, regional officer, UPPCB, said the petha manufacturers of Agra had been served notices recently to stop the use of coal in their stoves but most of the units continued to flout state government orders by stealthily receiving deliveries of coal at their premises in the night.
He said the Agra administration and UPPCB had banned the entry of coal trucks into the city and formed a four-member committee to oversee the relocation of these units into the petha cluster this month. A few trucks of coal had been confiscated by the administration and a firm ban was now in place.
But as the administration becomes adamant on relocating about 500 petha units of the town to the new industrial cluster, the petha workers have begun migrating from Agra to nearby towns in UP, MP and Rajasthan, establishing petha manufacturing units in those towns.
Some such units were currently operational in Lucknow and Kanpur in UP as well as a few other towns like Alwar in Rajasthan, Raipur in Chhattisgarh and Patiala in Punjab, which were now catering to the local markets, selling their products as "Agra Petha", almost all of them being operated by migrant workers from Agra.
But local petha manufacturers claimed that the taste of Agra petha could not be duplicated as the Yamuna water played an important role in imparting this particular taste to the sweet and efforts to replicate this taste had failed elsewhere due to a difference in the water source.
Talking to Business Standard, Ashok Kumar Tiwari, regional officer, UPPCB, said the petha manufacturers of Agra had been served notices recently to stop the use of coal in their stoves but most of the units continued to flout state government orders by stealthily receiving deliveries of coal at their premises in the night.
He said the Agra administration and UPPCB had banned the entry of coal trucks into the city and formed a four-member committee to oversee the relocation of these units into the petha cluster this month. A few trucks of coal had been confiscated by the administration and a firm ban was now in place.
But as the administration becomes adamant on relocating about 500 petha units of the town to the new industrial cluster, the petha workers have begun migrating from Agra to nearby towns in UP, MP and Rajasthan, establishing petha manufacturing units in those towns.
Some such units were currently operational in Lucknow and Kanpur in UP as well as a few other towns like Alwar in Rajasthan, Raipur in Chhattisgarh and Patiala in Punjab, which were now catering to the local markets, selling their products as "Agra Petha", almost all of them being operated by migrant workers from Agra.
But local petha manufacturers claimed that the taste of Agra petha could not be duplicated as the Yamuna water played an important role in imparting this particular taste to the sweet and efforts to replicate this taste had failed elsewhere due to a difference in the water source.
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