I find it difficult to imagine an Indian festival without something sweet on the table. A box ofmithai arriving at home, a plate of laddoos being passed around, a jalebi shared while it is stillwarm. We may disagree about almost everything else, but when it comes to celebrating, Indiahas always found a reason to add sugar.
This year, however, there is a slightly different taste to that sweetness.
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Sugar prices rose sharply through July and August, with the all-India retail price moving from Rs48.18 per kg on July 20 to Rs 55.70 on August 20, an increase of about 15.6 percent in amonth. The government attributed the rise to lower-than-expected domestic production, cropdamage, festive demand, tighter global supplies and speculation and hoarding in parts of the trade.
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For anyone outside the food business, a few rupees on a kilo of sugar may not sound dramatic.For a mithai maker producing thousands of boxes, a bakery running hundreds of cakes, or arestaurant using sugar across desserts, beverages and sauces, however, ingredient inflationquickly becomes a costing exercise.
And that is where this story becomes interesting.
India does not simply consume sweets during the festive season. We gift them, exchange them,serve them to guests and use them to mark relationships. Sugar travels through our festivalsalmost as much as people do.
The industry therefore faces a familiar but uncomfortable question: absorb the increase, raiseprices, reduce portions, reformulate recipes or find another ingredient?
The temptation to reformulate will be particularly interesting. We are already seeing consumers become more conscious about what goes into their food, while brands increasingly experiment with jaggery, dates, alternative sweeteners and lower-sugar formulations.
But I have always been slightly cautious about the phrase “healthy dessert”. Replacing onesweetener with another does not automatically make a mithai virtuous. Nor should every festiveindulgence come with an apology.
Food is allowed to be celebratory.
What matters is whether the industry is honest about what it is selling.
The encouraging part is that the government has not treated the price rise casually. It introduced stock limits, moved to curb hoarding and speculative activity, permitted duty-freeimports of raw sugar and pushed for earlier crushing to improve availability. By late August, ex-mill prices had fallen significantly, while retail prices had also begun moving down.
More recently, the government tightened dealer stockholding norms again for the festive period,while ICRA noted that improved availability was easing some of the upward pressure ondomestic prices.
So I don’t think this is a story about India suddenly running out of sugar.
It is a reminder of how quickly the economics of food can change.
As someone who looks at restaurants from both sides of the table, I believe the smartest businesses will not respond by simply making everything more expensive. They will look harderat sourcing, wastage, portion sizes, menu engineering and genuine innovation.
And perhaps consumers will change too. Not by giving up the gulab jamun or the barfi, but bybecoming more conscious about what they buy and why.
Because festivals should not become a battle between indulgence and guilt.
If anything, this year’s sugar story should make us appreciate the economics behind the plate alittle more.
We often talk about the price of a sweet.
Perhaps it is time we also understood the price of making that sweetness possible.
After all, India’s festivals may change with the times, but I suspect one thing will remain constant: when there is something worth celebrating, someone will still ask, “Mithai kaun si laaye?
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