Bengal will be commemorating the first anniversary of winning the GI (geographical indication) tag for Banglar Rasogolla with a bitter truth distracting from the sweetness of victory.

Not one sweetmeat producer out of one lakh-odd registered establishments in the state has yet applied to the food processing and horticulture development department for permission to use the GI tag on a product.

A senior official of the department said most manufacturers wanted to flaunt their brands as Banglar Rasogolla but were unwilling to adhere to the specifications and benchmarks for GI tagging.

Cottage cheese (chhana), for instance, cannot be mixed with semolina or white flour. The spherical dumplings that vary in size from shop to shop must weigh around 10gm each. The syrup needs to be light — the stipulated sugar concentration is 30 to 40 per cent — and have a transparent appearance.

Banglar Rasogolla should also conform to the metric of sponginess and have a smooth, soft texture with average moisture content of around 50 per cent. No starch can be used while preparing the dumplings.

“The catch lies in the strict specifications. We at Hindusthan Sweets use a negligible quantity of starch because that gives the texture to our rasogolla. Like us, many others can’t do without starch. And how about considering the fact that a large number of consumers don’t prefer spongy rasogollas?” said Rabindra Kumar Paul, who owns the popular franchise.

Paul is also the general secretary of the Paschim Banga Mistanna Byabsayee Samity, the largest association of sweetmeat producers in the state. A section of sweet producers accused the government of not even distributing GI application forms.

An official in the Union ministry of commerce and industry, which is building a GI registry, said labelling a product “Banglar Rasogolla” would be

illegal without meeting the specifications and applying for permission.

“Without a GI tag, there is no way of knowing whether the rasogolla one is enjoying in Bengal is actually Banglar Rasogolla or some other variant.”

The Telegraph