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Pushpesh Pant-

Food Cul­tures
and Trans­for­ma­tive Gov­er­nance

Push­pesh Pant

Chair: So­hail Hashmi

Wed. 9 De­cem­ber – 7:00pm | Gul­mo­har Hall – India Habi­tat Cen­tre, New Delhi

Food is a com­mon fibre con­nect­ing great culi­nary, med­ical and re­li­gious tra­di­tions as well as local her­itages that form and con­tinue small com­mu­ni­ties re­volv­ing around shared in­dige­nous knowl­edge. Food is the key to many cul­tures in India and the lan­guage of food, in­clud­ing prac­tices in food pro­duc­tion, pro­cess­ing, con­sump­tion, and con­ser­va­tion, is cen­tral to cul­tural iden­ti­ties in the coun­try. This lec­ture will ex­am­ine how food as cul­tural her­itage can pro­vide valu­able in­sights to­wards gov­er­nance think­ing, so­cial co­he­sion and re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion in our times. It will also try to ad­dress the di­verg­ing and chang­ing eco­nomic, so­cial-po­lit­i­cal and cul­tural mean­ings of food her­itage.

Push­pesh Pant is a teacher, au­thor, colum­nist, tele­vi­sion an­chor, broad­caster and in­de­pen­dent pro­ducer of tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­taries. Born in Naini­tal, he has stud­ied His­tory, In­ter­na­tional Re­la­tions and Law. His in­ter­ests in­clude Ayurved and re­lated tra­di­tional knowl­edge sys­tems, Hi­malayan folk­lore, IT en­abled Gad­gets, Hin­dus­tani Music. Ob­ses­sion: In­dian Cuisines. He has also writ­ten books on diplo­macy, travel, re­li­gion and food.

begumpur-e1439055844128-So­hail Hashmi will chair the lec­ture and mod­er­ate the dis­cus­sion. So­hail Hashmi grad­u­ated from DU and com­pleted his post-grad­u­a­tion and M.​Phil, from JNU, gave up his Ph.D. mid-way to work full time with the CPI (M). He Con­ducts Her­itage walks in Delhi, writes about Delhi, its lan­guage, its food, its water bod­ies and its mon­u­ments. He also makes doc­u­men­taries, writes and blogs on Is­sues of Cul­ture, Lan­guage, Ed­u­ca­tion and Com­mu­nal­ism. So­hail has worked with PTI TV, Na­tional Lit­er­acy Mis­sion, Home TV, BITV and king­fisher.com. He was Di­rec­tor of Leap Years – a Cre­ative Ac­tiv­ity Cen­tre for Chil­dren, cur­rently works with Knowl­edge In­fra­struc­ture Sys­tems Pvt Lim­ited and is the found­ing Trustee of SAH­MAT.