In the past two years, the Khaana Chahiye campaign, (now the Khaana Chahiye foundation) has come a long way. It started as a relief operation during the lockdown and has now become a full-fledged project to not only provide food to the needy and homeless but has also raised a war cry against hunger in Mumbai and Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR).
The team Khaana Chahiye has been conducting hunger mapping in the city and looking for long term solutions towards 'food for all.'
In conversation with the Free Press Journal, Khaana Chahiye's Ruben Mascarenhas (co-founder) and Swaraj Shetty (co-founder and director- digital) share the story of their endeavour to fight and eradicate hunger from the financial capital.
Tell us about Khaana Chahiye Foundation and how it came into being?
Ruben Mascarenhas (RM): Khaana Chahiye Foundation started as a citizen-led campaign in March 2020 to meet the immediate, lockdown-induced food demands of the homeless, migrant workers, daily wage labourers, and other vulnerable populations in the financial capital.
It was heartbreaking to see migrants struggling to reach their native places with no money or food. There were many who lost jobs or their source of income and had no means to food for themselves as well as their family. Then there were homeless people. All this made us six like-minded people plan and come together to do our bit.
Six of us including me and Swaraj, other co-founders of Khaana Chahiye include restaurateur Neeti Goel, businessman Anik Gadia, advocate Rakesh Singh of grassroots non-profit Bharat Utthan Sangh, and software consultant Pathik Muni. Later Shishir Joshi of volunteer-led organisation Project Mumbai too joined in. We all came together and decided to explore what we can do to help. Gradually we started receiving a lot of calls and messages from a lot of people going hungry. And that's how Khaana Chahiye started.
What was Khaana chahiye started as and what has it developed into now?
RM: Khaana chahiye happened by luck and grew as we realised its potential of reaching out to the masses. It started as a relief operation during Covid-19 induced lockdown to extend our help to needy, migrant workers, daily wage labourers and the homeless. When we got onto the ground and started reaching out to people, only then did we realise that the hunger problem is much graver than it seemed on the surface. That's when we decided to build a systematic demand and supply network. We are working to ensure that no one sleeps hungry. Today Khaana Chahiye is a registered organisation.
Swaraj Shetty (SS): For the first time we distributed 1,200 meals. And in just the first ten days, we were overwhelmed. It was an eye-opener for us as we realised that the actual demand was 50 times greater than we had anticipated. The lockdown kept extending, the number of messages and demands we received started rising exponentially. Realising this by the end of April, we created a proper framework to identify demand, arrange supply, and distribute food in each and every corner of Mumbai. We had tie-ups and associated with government agencies like BMC and others to serve food in trains that were leaving from Mumbai and had no pantries. Served stranded migrant workers.
Later we mapped out different clusters in the city where we could distribute biscuit-and-food packets, then identified and activated restaurants were turned into community kitchens temporarily. Social media play a vital role to find volunteers who would help scale up their efforts as well as connected us to needy people. As the lockdown kept extending, we anticipated that the situation will worsen and so we started involving corporates to fund our initiative.
3. What is the hunger mapping project, what is currently happening with the project?
RM: Pandemic amplified inequality think. While we did reach out to a large number of needy people during the lockdown, post lockdown, we wanted to continue pursuing the cause. That's when we realised that there is no data. The available data on hunger and poverty in Mumbai is outdated and lacks a feedback loop, thus rendering it obsolete, for any measurable impactful intervention. Hence we realised there was an urgent need to conduct a systematic mapping of what we call the hunger mapping project. We are trying to visualise this problem with a multi-dimensional approach, create data to enable us to look for long term solutions. This is a community-driven approach. Phase one of the hunger mapping project entails - Mapping the homeless population. Phase 2: Identifying critical slum clusters. Phase 3: Covering the rest of the city.
SS: Right now we are at the stage where we are mapping homeless people, which is phase one. we are exploring policy-oriented solutions to hunger.
4. How many meals have Khaana Chahiye served since it started till date?
SS: We distributed 46.5 lakh cooked meals, 20,000 dry ration kits and reached out to about five lakh migrant workers during the first lockdown (2020). During the second lockdown (2021) 20.5 lakh cooked meals and 51,000 dry ration kits were distributed. Currently, we are distributing 2,000 meals per day with the help of our two community kitchens one in Kurla (by women self-help grounds) and the second one in Ulhasnagar (by transgender collectives). Besides this, on a weekly basis, we support 100 to 200 families with dry ration Many reach out to us for groceries and dry ration.
5. Khaana chahiye which started as a campaign to help serve food to helpless migrant workers during the lockdown is now an NGO conducting hunger mapping of Mumbai. What's the next plan?
SS: While we are working to eradicate hunger a broader aim came to the fore. Besides this, we are also initiated - the Ration card project, wherein we work with the local government and government agencies to ensure everybody has a ration card. Thus putting an end to the inaccessibility for the poor when it comes to government schemes.
Besides this, we are also urging BMC to create urban shelters for people who are homeless. The need for shelters is felt only during the monsoon. Only 13 out of the court-mandated 150 shelters are functional. The aim here is to collate compelling data, engage the community and make the local self-governments take responsibility.
RM: After all this, we will formalise the hunger maps and upgrade them using help from the community and various other stakeholders to solve the destitution problems in the city as far as we can.
6. What is the report hunger feature of Khaana Chahiye?
SS: Reporting cases of hunger was a service previously available via a web form. Now, our initiative is accessible to a wider user base of WhatsApp. Not all beneficiaries are regular smartphone users. As hunger distress is invisible, we wanted to share a simple one-on-one channel for the needy to reach out to us or others who can help them by reporting hunger to us. Khaana Chahiye’s WhatsApp Helpline: 76698 00470.
7. Message to people who waste food.
RM: The biggest realisation is how very privileged we are for having food on the table on not having to think or struggle about where will we get our next meal from. Eating food is not just what we do for survival it's a huge responsibility. We only need to think about these basic things and about all those underprivileged and homeless who have no food at all before wasting food.
