Jalpaiguri: Although the district has abundant palm trees, there was no one to make jaggery from palm juice here. With jaggery high in demand and the presence of palm trees, Mohammad Rahim crossed borders sensing a great opportunity for producing and selling pure jaggery in Dudhia village. Rahim is accompanied by his nephew and is back in Bengal after a two years Covid-19 break.
Mohammad Rahim, a native of Bagh Thana in the Rajshahi district of Bangladesh, had come to Bengal four years ago to cash in on the opportunity to produce and sell jaggery here. With the people of Bengal being fond of sweets, especially pitha, payesh and jaggery in the winter season, Rahim's business has found its footing. Rahim extracts palm juices and makes pure jaggery with the help of his nephew in the Rajganj block of Jalpaiguri.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Rahim couldn't come to Bengal leading to a shortage of jaggery supply in the market as he is the lone producer of it in the area. Rahim said that 70 palm trees are cut and 150 litres of sap is collected on average. After that, 30 kgs of jaggery is made.
On establishing his foothold in India, Rahim said, "There is no shortage of people to cut down the trees and make jaggery in Bangladesh, but there is a lack of people to cut palm trees here. So, there is more scope here." A few years ago, we came to know that there are a lot of date trees in Dudhia village of Rajganj in Jalpaiguri district, but there are no people to make jaggery," Rahim told ETV Bharat. Sabitri Mondal, a local resident, said that it is because of these people from Bangladesh that they savouring pure jaggery. "He could not come because of the lockdown. So, we had to buy jaggery from other markets, including Jalpaiguri, Odlabari and Siliguri.
