Authors:

Anusha Kumar

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About Paper:

In the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, 23.1% of the population is undernourished, according to estimates by the Global Hunger Index, despite Tamil Nadu's robust food security welfare programs [1]. In an urban area like Chennai, food insecurity is compounded by poverty, gender inequality, religious discrimination, and caste apartheid. Additionally, extreme weather driven by climate change has disrupted agricultural output and caused localized food shortages that disproportionately affect marginalized groups. In the face of these overlapping inequalities, mutual aid may be able to empower local people to reclaim their right to food produced through ecologically sustainable ways. Mutual aid refers to a collective exchange of resources between community members for reciprocal benefit. This presentation investigates how mutual aid networks in Chennai organize to create pathways to food sovereignty and urban resilience. Through interviews with members of grassroots organizations, including a climate justice non-profit, and urban farming initiative, and a food re-distribution network, this study unpacks how mutual aid can be understood in a South Asian context, specifically in relation to existing systems of oppression across South Asia, including caste apartheid, gender inequality, and religious discrimination. This study further examines how these networks engage with notions of reciprocity while challenging or reproducing charitable logics. Women's self-help groups (SHGs) and non-profit organizations were found to be a significant model of mutual aid in Chennai. These organizations use either the local production and/or distribution of nourishing food as a means of feeding communities. Such structures, in turn, support the creation of green spaces, the reduction of food waste, and the development of strong, inter-personal relationships between diverse groups. These systems of community care operate in largely democratic ways and actively work to resist existing inequalities in Chennai by empowering lower-income women and centering caste-oppressed and tribal communities in aid distribution efforts.

Source:

Northwestern University

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Co-authors:

Anusha Kumar