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| James P.Mathew, Marangottupalli, Kottayam |
For 9 years has been on a mission to create value-added products from jackfruit and to disseminate this knowledge to all who will care to make use of them.
It all started after he sold his tea estate in Karnataka and came back to Kerala. Seeing the fallen jackfruits rotting without any demand, his relatives advised him to slaughter the trees and sell the wood. But the farmer in him had other ideas. He then entered into a four-year period of cocoon-like self-discovery to derive preservable jackfruit products.
The search did not go in vain as he was able to come up with at least 15 products including pickle, jelly, payasam, ada etc made of the fruit. He spent a fortune in getting their quality authenticated by competent labs.
Thus after four years, he decided to make known his findings to the people at large. His forays to the Government centres at Thiruvananthapuram and Delhi elicited some verbal hoorays but nothing beyond. It was then that he took part in an exhibition at Delhi. The interaction with the visitors convinced him about the scope for his products.
After coming home, he strived to start units for manufacturing his products. To the profit-oriented among his relatives, he was emphatic that not he, but the people at large should benefit from his work.
His neighbourhood has a clear understanding about the determination of James. Once he had made strenuous effort to coordinate the surrender of land from 28 owners to make a four kilometer road – without benefiting even a rupee in the process. His next effort is to manufacture his products in Kudumbasree units and sell them through some government agency.
Recently a team from Karnataka visited him and evinced keen interest in his products. They bought drier unit from him on the spot and made immediate steps to start manufacturing units.
That is the difference between Keralites and others, he says.
Courtesy:
R.Renjith (text), Arun Sreedhar (photo), Malayala Manorama, June 5,
2011
Contributed by: Administrator
