Save the poder and the traditional occupation

Some things don’t change. In Goa the local baker still pedals a cycle through the neighbourhood streets tooting his horn to announce his arrival, to let the residents in their homes know that he has come with fresh bread hot from the oven. Elders and children, who have been waiting for just this, rush out of their houses to buy the bread. It’s almost a tradition in the State. But some things do change, those that just cannot be turned back in time. 

There will be at least two generations of persons who remember the time when they would walk into the local bakery and buy pipping hot bread with the smallest of currency notes. For Re 1, they would walk out of the bakery with ten loaves of pao or undde or poie. There will be many more who will recall that they bought five loaves of the local pao for Re 1, and that just two days ago they came close to having to pay Rs 5 for a single loaf of the same pao. The escalation in price has been huge, and it won’t be too long before a single loaf of bread will cost Rs 5, the bakers are facing problems keeping the price down, and in the years to come the price go even further. 

Prices of all commodities have increased, why not bread. The local baker has his share of troubles – he is paying more for flour, firewood, labour – and has to recover his costs to stay afloat. This is one traditional occupation that receives no subsidy from the government despite there being a recommendation that pao, being a ‘heritage’ item should be patronised by the government by offering the bakers a 50 per cent subsidy to keep them from slipping into losses. Successive governments have ignored that recommendation, but perhaps they can no longer do so. 

The bakers’ association that announced the rise, have withdrawn the proposed hike in the price of bread, on the assurance that the Leader of the Opposition will arrange a meeting for them with the Chief Minister. And then came another association, the older one that clarified that they were not party to the decision to increase the price of pao, and that a decision will be taken next month. While that – the differences between the two associations – gets settled, it is clear that the bakers in Goa are not finding it easy to make ends meet. 

Goa is known for its bread – its pao – that once was unequalled by any other. It was fermented with toddy and is one of the legacies of the Portugese rule that still keeps the taste buds of people in Goa and of those outside the State watering. Today, the bakers use yeast and the bread may not have the flavour it had in the decades past, but Goans will eat bread for breakfast, will have it at lunch time, munch into it at tea time and even dip it in their gravy preparations that they partake of at dinner time. It is the Goan replacement to chappati or roti that is so common in the rest of the country. But, bread is now in a tangle of dough that is becoming hard to rise.

Not only are there two associations fighting for the bakers of Goa, but then if there is to be some positive outcome for those who bake the bread, then there has to be an understanding between the two associations too. Their strength lies in unity if they want the authorities to hear them and support them. It is perhaps the fact that there are diverse associations that have kept the bakers struggling to stay afloat. 

For, strangely, the bakers of Goa have been ignored by successive governments, their issues remaining unmet. Another reason for this perhaps is the fact that they do not constitute a vote bank within a small area, they being spread out across the State. Compare this to the taxi unions that have in the past, not any longer, been able to command the government and get their will. The bakers have been unable to do so. There was a time some years ago, when the bakers had wanted to increase the price of bread from Rs 3 to Rs 4, but the then government had asked them to maintain the price and promised that it would pay them the extra Re 1 per loaf to meet their costs as a sort of subsidy. That promise never did materialise, and the bakers had to go ahead and increase the rate to Rs 4 a loaf, the price the Goenkar is now paying for the pao.

The increase in the price of pao has brought up another issues that is disquietening. The president of the All Goa Bakers and Confectioners Association has mentioned of the younger generations of the baker families giving up the traditional occupation and seeking employment overseas due to the difficulty in continuing with the business of their forefathers. This is not confined to the bakers, but to almost every traditional occupation in the State – fishing, farming – being no exceptions to this. That the progeny of the baker is following the trend is not surprising, though it is disheartening. 

But, while the price of the loaf of bread is increasing, the quality has not been always keeping pace with it, and that is a complaint that many of Goa’s lovers of the pao have. True, the bakers no longer use toddy to ferment the dough that gives it the special taste, opting for yeast that is cheaper and more readily available. That makes the toddy tapper, another traditional profession in Goa, to be on the decline and going downhill fast. There are more bakers today – even if some are among those that have settled in the State – but there definitely are fewer persons tapping the coconut trees for toddy, which makes this one profession coming close to being extinct at some time in the future. Toddy is now rarely used for bread or as a leavening agent for other items that are baked, and even its other use as vinegar is declining with a number of people opting for the alternative in the synthetic kind of vinegar.

Sadly, there is little of tradition still being put in the making and baking of bread. The dough is kneaded by machines, toddy has been replaced by yeast and many of firewood ovens have made way for electric ones. Yet, as already said, some things never change and the Goenkar and his pao cannot be separated. They go together and will always stay together. That is the main reason that everything possible has to be done to save the traditional occupation from declining. Can a Goenkar imagine a day when there won’t be a Goenkar baking pao in Amchem Goem?