The Slow Exit of Foraging in Urban Blue Spaces

When one thinks of foragers, one perhaps imagines a people living harmoniously in pre-modern or rural environs, getting their fill from their immediate natural surroundings. But foraging is also a crucial means to secure nutrition and food security in urban centres. Exploring the food systems in the wetlands of Kolkata—as well as the floodplains, wetlands, fixed lakes, marshes, and seasonal streams of Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kerala, and Assam—this article makes a case for the significance of the micro-habitats that enrich urban India’s diets, and the crucial role women play in the process of foraging.

The lack of consideration for their role in food systems has led to urban beautification and restoration drives that prioritise recreational use of these spaces over their dietary provisions. While not the explicit focus of this article, women foragers populate the research with anecdotes, images and statistics, emerging as the chief foragers securing food and nutrition for their families while remaining absent from urban food markets. The feature is based on a study by researcher Sukanya Basu, titled ‘Widespread Practices and Sustainability Benefits of Foraging in Urban Blue Spaces of India’. Along with her colleagues, Basu surveyed over 1,200 people (799 women and 391 men) who used these urban water bodies or blue spaces (from March to September in 2023). It found that more than half of them frequently collected edibles from urban water bodies for personal use, sale, or collective cooking.