For the first time in many decades perhaps Indians are getting to taste their own mangoes — sweet, fleshy, soft and smooth. Malda aam or Malda mango to be specific. The reason: Slumped export market owing to low yield, yet high price. The upshot: Crops are experiencing a bumper sale in the domestic outlets so to say.
Says Afroz Bhai an orchard owner in Old Malda, “Not on many occasions you have a high quality product with a sluggish export… This year the export market has slumped because of high quality and low quantity… the price fetched abroad is not as remunerative as the market would expect and so we are forced to sell it indoors.”
This year the Malda mango that you get for `80-`120 in Kolkata is being sold at `100-`150 per kilogram in Delhi, the Bengal Horticulture department officials said. The wholesale prices surged by about 50-60 per cent due to low yield and high quality.
“We expected higher price abroad when we were booking customers from England or Dubai… they showed interest then but owing to higher price they backtracked and then the mango route was diverted to internal markets,” said Roop Kanjilal a mango expert and a whole-seller of fruits, adding how this year the customers in Delhi played a “compensatory role” insofar as mango market is concerned.
“About 17 tonnes of mango was sold alone in the Delhi Mango festival… and though other varieties like Himsagar, Lakshman Bhog were in demand Langra for its high quality yield sold hugely,” said a member of West Bengal Exporters’ Coordination Committee.
Malda is a historical medieval town where the Malda mango originated perhaps during the time of the Nawabs of Bengal one of whom loved the aroma of the fruit so much that he got a row of several varieties like Madhukulkuli and Begam Khas planted in his backyard apparently to please and enamour his queens in sleep.
The mango earned a new appellation Langra after travelling to Varanasi in the hands of a lame sadhu who got it planted somewhere near the Kashi Vishwanath Temple and subsequently directed a priest to offer two fruits every day to Lord Vishwanath.
Subsequently as the Kashi Naresh or the king of Kashi got the wind of it he pestered the Sadhu to lend him some seeds to and subsequently the Langra (Malda) Mango which earned its name from the lame (langra) sadhu spread all over the country, particularly northern India giving a run for its money to the likes of local Dusseri and Chausa varieties.
Besides, Malda Mango has one more use. The Aam Shotto or Aam Papad as it is called in northern India is a popular way to preserve sweet ripe mangoes which are pureed and cooked in a kadai till they thicken. Then it is dried in the hot sun of Bhado (post monsoon) season to obtain a sweet dish which is also used to prepare chutneys.
“Not only the fruit Malda has been a big market for Aam Shotto … each orchard owner earned in crores … but for the past several years perhaps due to the climate change the yield is suffering in quantity … this time it was no different,” said Gulabuddin another orchard owner from Adina in Malda.
This year production fell by 60 per cent on account of hot weather, untimely rains and almost no westerly. The output was 2.2 lakh tonnes as compared to 3.79 lakh tonnes in 2023, sources in the horticulture department said adding “had it not been the desi customers who paid a good price the mango market would have perished this year round.”
Another fruit merchant from Malda refusing to share his name --- because he himself comes from a political party --- said, “we have been repeatedly begging for setting up fruit processing industries in Malda and Murshidabad … the ones that were being planned by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee when he was the Chief Minister … but nothing has been done … we hope the Government will take into account the element of climate change and the economic future of the region to come up with new plans.”
