Diwali is the festival of light and celebrated with the taste of sweet in Bharat. The Bharatiya festival which spread the message of oneness and spiritual victory of light over darkness, good over evil and knowledge over ignorance. The lights of Diwali signify a time to destroy all our dark desires and thoughts, eradicated dark shadows and evils and gives us the strength and the zeal to carry on with our goodwill for the rest of the year. In this communication of IP Wave we are going to discuss an intellectual property supported sweet…JoynagarMoa.
Moa of Joynagar has been pleasing the Bengali taste for almost over a century. Thousands of Bharatiya are familiar with the Joynagar Moa, even if they are not from the Joynagar city. The sweet is to be prepared using special ingredients and is required to consume within a short shelf life. This was limiting factor to enjoy this delicacy offered to Bengalis and residents of Bengal's surrounding states. The variety of Moa originated in Joynagar of the South 24 Parganas district in the Bharatiya state of West Bengal. Joynagarer Moa was given a Geographical Indication (GI) tag in 2015, recognizing the mentoring by
Vision IPR’s Prof Prabuddha Ganguli in internationalization of Joynagar Moa. This will enable the product to be protected from unauthorized uses and piracy. There are over 250 sweet shops around Joynagar, which produce Joynagarer Moa with the original ingredients and are associated material under
Joyanagar Moa Nirmankari Society to supply this special sweet under their official Trademark and GI recognition.
A well-established sweet, Joynagar Moa is facing challenges due to date palm jaggery which is becoming harder to make it available due to the decrease in the number of date palms in West Bengal and the shift of members of the Shiuli community, traditional producers of "Nolen Gur" from date palm juice, to other professions. Similarly, Kanakchur rice is a local variant which grows only in winter and through traditional fertiliser-free techniques only. There was a need to improve on the economy of scale expending the access to the market delimiting the shelf life and supply of this product. Moa of Joynagar supported through a radical packaging innovation improving the shelf life and incremental supply network through Indian Postal service and few oversees courier services to improve existing delivery network from a limited districts of Bengal and surrounding states to fetch the international market. Now this sweet is available for online purchase through
http://www.joynagarmoa.org/.
Let’s understand the GI significance of Joynagar Moa…wherein the name Moa is derived from the word 'Mo,' which denotes Madhu (honey). Sunderban's Honey (Mo) is renowned across the world. Joynagarer Moa is a seasonal Bengali sweet delicacy prepared Nolen Gur (jaggery made from date palm tree extract with exquisite taste and aroma), Kanakchur khoi (a form of popped rice made from a special variety of aromatic rice), Gawa ghee (a type of clarified butter made from cow's milk), elach (cardamom), and posto (poppy seed). Both Nolen Gur and Kanakchur rice are winter products (available around November to January).
To gain the knowledge out of ignorance about Joynagar Moa it’s important to recall the findings from the history of this sweet. The old Pundra Bardhan came to known as Gour for the preparation of best gur from sugarcane. Panini wrote ‘Gurasha auang desho goura’, which means Gour is the place of gur. At that time, Mitragunge was a famous gunge area (market place) in Joynagar. In this village, Hat-Bazar used to be held on Mondays and Fridays. The villagers from different villages viz. Tili Para, Moydah, Uttar Para, Baharu, Dakshin Kalikapur used to come to sell gur (molasses) in the Hat-Bazar. The great quality of date-tree jaggery is well documented in the Piruli song of Farid Pir. Haranath Mondal has also collected different poem on date-tree jaggery of Dakshin Kalikapur.
The artisans belonging to Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, Other Backward Classes and Mahisya Community were first to prepare these sweets without any consent and the knowledge of Zaminders (land lords) of Joynagar-Majilpur area. It is most astonishing to learn that this Moa, sweetest of all sweets was invented and popularized without any knowledge of land lords. However, these kinds of sweets are sold to their relatives locally and also the far of places. Thus the fame of the popular Moa spread throughout Bharat during the season of Moa to buy and consume the authentic Moa from Joynagar. These land lords, thus, helped to promote the popularity of the Moa of Joynagar amongst the residents of the different areas surrounding to bengal.
In the middle of the nineteenth century a link was established between the people of the Joynagar-Majilpur areas and the employees working on different offices of Kolkata. In the process, Bengalis living in Kolkata and neighbouring region came to learn about the tasty flavour of these completely unknown sweets and named it as “tasteful Moa”. Bengalis hankered for these sweets in the winter season. As a result, the sale of these sweets raised and there is an immense change in the standard of living of these poor working class people. With the change of market pool, the living conditions of these workers along with their members in South 24 Parganas improved and they now became the upholders of good fortune.
Sweet is delicacy of festival and like Joynagar Moa there are hundreds of sweet in Bharat which is yet to get the attraction and access to wider network and incremental innovations.
