RAJAMAHENDRAVARAM : Whenever we hear the word ‘pickle’, involuntarily our mouth begins to water imagining the sour and tangy tastes of the veggies soaked in spices for months. Usulumarru village of East Godavari district is one such place where the villagers have been occupied with making and marketing various flavours of pickles for the past 40 years.
Often known as pickle village, Usulumarru is a tiny village located amidst picturesque beauty on the bank of Godavari’s tributary Vasista in Peravali mandal of East Godavari. It is just 40 km away from Rajamahendravaram and 20 km from Tanuku town.
Soon after entering the village, one can notice that every house is busy with the manufacturing of pickles, including world renowned mango pickle followed by lemon, ginger, tamarind, green chillies and amla (Indian gooseberry) pickles. Little shops lined up on the streets of the village filled with unbranded pickles arranged on the racks, are the most unusual landmark of Usulumarru. The pickles at this village are known for its spicy, delicious and affordability with uncompromised quality and quantity.
Pickle making dates back to more than four decades in Usulumarru started by the Pilla Sriramamurthy family as a livelihood. Now, more than two thirds of the village population is depending on this cottage industry with more than 2,000 of the 2,400 odd population depending on this business. An average woman earns about Rs 300 and man earns Rs 450 as labour charges paid by the pickle manufacturers in the village.
While women are engaged in making pickles, men are involved in marketing by finding new customers from within and outside the State apart from supplying the product to their regular clients such as shops, hostels, hotels and restaurants. The scope of marketing even spreads to major cities like Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Guntur, Ongole, Visakhapatnam, Tirupati, Chennai, Bangalore and other parts of West Bengal and Odisha.
Sourcing quality ingredients from regular suppliers, men and women equally distribute their works, where women take up the task of mixing the ingredients and men take the herculean task of cutting and processing the pickles. The list hanging outside the shops include pickles of green tamarind, red chilly, amla, ginger, lemon, cauliflower, gongura (red sorrel), bitter gourd and others.
According to Kommara Venkateswararao, a pickle manufacturer and vendor, whose family has been in the pickle making business for two generations, the steep hike in the ingredients’ prices has jacked up the investment to anything above Rs 3 lakh a year. However, the returns are satisfactory, they say.
“Our family members would prepare the pickles and the male members would go to the cities to sell them in the market. On an average we are out of the village for more than six months. Lack of support from the government or banks. We take loans from private financiers and pay hefty interest for decades,” he said.
“Now, we are surviving on our own. If there is institutional support, we can give our children better education and a better future,” said Ananthalakshmi, an expert in mixing pickles from the same village.
There are many other ancillary trades in the village dependent on this pickles business. Some families make a livelihood as ingredients suppliers to these pickles makers involving all communities in the village in the manufacturing of pickles. Majority of people are drawn from lower middle class backgrounds with the burden of looking after their families. They sought the government to ensure that they would not fall into the clutches of private money lenders for raising capital for their small business.