Women from rehab colony blaze food trail in Jajpur dist

KENDRAPARA: Sharp at 6:30 every morning for the past one and a half months, a team of women of Radha Krishna Self-Help Group (SHG) has been walking from Gobarghati Rehabilitation and Resettlement Colony towards Duburi Chowk with a mobile food van. Their destination? The main gate of the Tata Steel Plant in Kalinganagar in Jajpur district, where they sell breakfast items.
The SHG, with the support of the Kalinganagar unit of Tata Steel Rural Development Society, began the 'food on wheels' in the first week of April. The items the women sell include vada, samosa, idli and chakuli. They move to two other spots in the area before returning to their colony after around three hours on the road.

The popularity of the mobile food van has picked up slowly but steadily. The neat and colourful cart, with an all-woman team serving quality breakfast items, is a new concept in Kalinganagar and has drawn eyeballs here. And the women of Radha Krishna SHG are not the only ones to make most of the business opportunity.

Two other SHGs in Gobarghati - Maa Laxmi and Sai Ram - also sell food items worth around Rs 6,000 to Rs 8,000 a day. After the Radha Krishna breakfast team returns to base, the Maa Laxmi team follows the same route with lunch - vegetable biryani, non-vegetable biryani and lata mandi (a tribal non-veg recipe) - and returns by 3:30 pm; then, the Sai Ram team moves ahead with the evening snacks - samosa, vada and other deep-fried items.

Around two months ago, a group of 17 members of the SHGs were sent to the PACE Skill Centre, established by Tata Steel, at Sheregada in Ganjam district to receive training on food production. At the three-day residential course, the women were taught to prepare different gravies, biryani and South Indian dishes.

"The training has given us a lot of confidence. Earlier, we were apprehensive about preparing restaurant-standard food. We saw food being cooked at low investment. The chefs gave us tips," said Sukumari Jamuda, the secretary of Sai Ram SHG. Now, around 30 SHG members earn around Rs 3,000 a month by selling traditional food items.