Events

Ms. Seema Mundoli


While many of us buy our leafy vegetables from the market, several others collect greens from urban commons in the city. This practice, known as urban foraging, is undertaken mostly by middle-aged and elderly women, often from the urban poor, who have learned the skill of foraging from their parents and grandparents. The plants they collect are used widely in cooking, as medicine, or have different cultural uses. For women foraging is critical to meet the nutritional needs of their family—as well as in making tasty dishes. But our cities are concretizing. The urban commons where foraging was carried out are either converted to built spaces, being degraded, or are being enclosed alienating foragers from accessing these spaces. Since foraging contributes to the nutritional basket of families especially the urban poor the question then is: How can we plan and design our cities differently so that activities like foraging can be allowed to continue?

The talk is based on the book Chasing Soppu, authored by Dhruthi Somesh, Rohit Rao, Ranjini Murali, Seema Mundoli, and Harini Nagendra and published by Azim Premji University.