Why Agra has no place for Taj of sweets
(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated May 26, 2025)The smell of syrup in the air, the hot petha rolling out of factories on both sides of the road, their candied memories travelling up and down the country in tiny coloured boxes by road, rail and now air—this is the identity of Agra's Noori Gate area. About seven kilometres from the Taj Mahal, these desi ptisseries also churn out tiny, delicate monuments to the sweetness of composite culture. If the Taj was born in Shah Jahan's mind, legend has it that the petha was born in his royal kitchen—upon a royal firman to create a sweet delicacy as pure and white as the Taj! Marble was traded for white pumpkin, Agra's magic spell was spoken, and voilathe world was suddenly sweeter.advertisementSUGAR SPIKEDThat magic spell is being broken. The Noori Gate petha manufactories, running unbroken since the Mughal period, have been ordered to shift out of the city. That also breaks other ties with history. In 1929, the revolutionary Bhagat Singh, after shooting down British police officer John Saunders (the Lahore Conspiracy Case that led to his hanging), spent a few days hiding in a two-storey house right here in Noori Gate area.
Girish Singhal, 63, lives next to this house, beginning his petha-making career in his two-room abode in 1980. Over 40 years on, he's worried. 'I do not have the resources to go 30 km away and set up business afresh. If there's too much pressure, I'll stop making petha and open a grocery shop but not move.'
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Anoop Mittal, 50, another Noori Gate native, conjures up the Gilauri Patta, a special sweet made from petha. 'I make petha on the ground floor of my two-storey house,' he says. 'It's a cottage industry for my family. If I shift out, I won't be able to bear the costs. I'll have to stop.'Noori Gate has over 500 small and big units related to petha production. Over 5,000 people work here, churning out some 1,000 quintals of petha daily. For about three decades, the locality has attracted the attention of disapproving government planners due to an ironic inversion of the petha's relation to the Taj: the fear that pollution caused by this sweet-making industry could be damaging the heritage monument.On April 3, the Supreme Court ordered the evacuation of petha units from the city. It was hearing cases related to the Taj Trapezium Zone (TTZ), a designated 10,400 sq. km area around the Taj, established to protect it from pollution. After this, the Agra administration and the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) have started surveying these petha units.Pollution is indeed an issue. After the TTZ was set up in 1983, the use of coal in kilns was banned and petha units adopted gas-based technology. In 2013, the UPPCB imposed a complete ban on the entry of coal-laden trucks into Agra. But problems persisted. According to a 2021 study by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the city's petha industry generates about 17,800 kg of solid waste per day, mostly petha peels, sugar syrup and lime water. District officials say a campaign was launched in 2018 to educate petha producers about the importance of proper waste disposal, also granting aid to the big players to procure equipment for it. A large part of the industry, though, falls under the unorganised sector, beyond the pale of government benefits.advertisementThe traders deny petha pollution, and say the incriminating data is from a 25-year-old survey. Says Rajesh Agarwal, a leading voice from the organised part of the industry: 'Now all the units run on gas furnaces. The peel was earlier identified as waste, but now they use it as animal feed. They should conduct a fresh survey.'Dr Devashish Bhattacharya, an ENT surgeon who's fighting a case in the National Green Tribunal (NGT) against petha pollution, is still sympathetic to their fate. 'If all facilities were provided on time by the government, the petha makers would not have faced any problem,' he says. Now, they face the gloomy prospect of shifting to the New Petha City in Kalindi Vihar, a 1999-vintage plan on which none of the traders were consulted.A bitter end looms to a long story.Subscribe to India Today Magazineadvertisement
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