Shyamhari Chakra
NEW DELHI: After its flagship festival Lucknow Mahotsav and the famed Lucknow Literature Festival, the culturally vibrant ‘City of the Nawabs’ is now in the news for its Gur Mahotsav – the annual jaggery festival.
With Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath launching the two-day festival in the capital city of Lucknow on Saturday, the event has attracted attention from far and wide.
The festival is an ambitious attempt to create the jaggery products of Uttar Pradesh as an international brand.
The State has an estimated seven lakh sugarcane farmers with sugarcane cultivation spread over nearly 27 lakh hectares.
More than 60 varieties of popular jaggery products are found in the State.
The products include jaggery tea, jaggery laddu, kulfi, jalebi, halwa, kheer, dry ginger, cardamom, sesame, groundnut, ghazak, cashew, almond, jaggery dumpling and jaggery chocolate.
Under the One District-One Product scheme of the Central Government, UP has got three of its districts – Muzaffarnagar, Ayodhya and Lakhimpur – as the hub of jaggery.
In May 2019, the first ever Gur Mahotsav of India was launched at Muzaffarnagar, known as Asia’s biggest gur-mandi – marketplace of jaggery.
With the state capital chosen as the venue for the annual Gur Mahotsav and the Chief Minister evincing a keen interest in it, Uttar Pradesh is set to witness a big boost to the jaggery industry.
