Parle G - The Hope G

Parle G - The ‘Hope G’

Most of the kids belonging to the middle-class families of 
80’s - 90’s may have loving memories of eating Parle G biscuits from its yellow paper wax pack with the photo of a lovely kid. Years passed, cookies took some space of biscuits, kids of those era became parents of kids but the importance and presence of Parle G in the biscuit world remain intact.The same Parle G still entices those kids as well as stray dogs of metros. People started feeding Parle G to puppies because of its low cost. Few because they love pets and few just out of sheer fashion.

The same Parle G turned out to be life savior for thousands and thousands of migrant workers and their families who hit the road in desperate move to reach their villages during the corona lockdown. With few packs of Parle G and water and never-dying hope , they traveled more than a thousand kilometers. Few just on foot, few on cycles and bikes. People mainly migrant laborers from prosper states mainly Tamilnadu, Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat started to travel towards their native and labor-intensive states like U.P, Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal etc within a week of the lockdown. They were walking days and nights on road, railway tracks in a desperate move to survive, and even ready to die among their own people. With hotels, roadside Dhaba, restaurants closed , they had to rely on ready-made or packed food to survive during their long journey. A small pack of low-cost Parle G from any corner stores or from generous ngo , individuals came handy to them. It gave them a hope to have something in their stomach to carry on their desperate and ardors journey. The old and nostalgic Parle G became a new panacea for them and became the ‘Hope G’ for them. Though having lots of biscuits is not considered good for health because of the presence of refined white flour in biscuits. But when there is a race between hunger and fear, hunger has an advantage, forget about nutrition values.

The front line medical staff, transporters, grocery stores, sanitation workers, ngo, and individuals helping people to survive with their services during the uncertain Corona period were termed as ‘Corona Warriors’. It had got one very unusual addition in the list, the ‘Parle G’ as another ‘Corona Warrior’. It indeed helped many to survive a very unusual and difficult times arouse because of Corona and subsequent lockdown.

Around Oct-Nov 2019, people were gauging the health of the Indian economy by the sale of biscuits. Economics pundits predicted signs of the dwindling economy as people were not buying biscuits particularly ‘Parle G’ especially in rural India. Biscuit shelves of grocery stores were almost empty in March - April 2020 during the Corona lockdown. The same Parle G registered its highest growth in its history in the months of March-April 2020, but the market still does not look very green even though the biscuit industry is flying with colors. May be economics pundits will come up with some other yardsticks to gauge the pulse of the economy if not biscuits.

There is another story of Parle G nostalgia. At one end it had become food for puppies in India’s metros because of its cheaper price, it is sold three to four times costlier in countries like the UK, the USA, etc. Sometimes demand is too high in those countries to meet the supply. Those kids of the ’80s-’90s who have come abroad wanted to live their childhood memories with each Parle G dipping in their morning cup of tea. They wanted to relive those moments of sharing Parle G biscuits

 

with their siblings and friends when they had a limited capacity to purchase even Parle G.

Though having many biscuits are not good for health, even the plastic packaging of Parle G like other brands of biscuits is not healthy for the environment. The company should look back to its old paper wax pack to help nature to revive itself with less plastic pollution in the coming days and years. The company which was named after the place where it was started in Mumbai, Ville Parle has seen more than seven decades of its journey. With around 1 billion packs of Parle G biscuits consumed every month, the plastic pollution by it can not be simply ignored.

In the meanwhile Parle G, the new ‘Hope G’ broke all records of sale and rekindled hopes of not only migrant workers but thousands of its staff and their families when there is a real shortage of job opportunities in the country because of the Corona pandemic. It’s time to have a couple of Parle G with tea.