As part of the People’s Resource Initiative with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), PRC aims to promote urban agriculture in Delhi through outreach meetings with the councillors and the Horticulture Department of MCD. The rationale for urban agriculture outreach is three-fold. Firstly, urban agriculture promotes environmental sustainability and helps create local systems of food production. Secondly, focusing on urban agriculture complements and aids various national and global initiatives including The National Education Policy recommendations to inculcate agriculture in school and college curricula, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the Delhi government’s focus on Green jobs. Finally, the meetings with councillors raise awareness about the Citizen; ‘s Draft Policy on Urban Agriculture in Delhi created by the People’s Resource Centre on Urban Agriculture.
Councillors were chosen for urban agriculture policy outreach for two reasons, firstly, gardens and parks come under the municipality jurisdiction which are identified as having potential for urban agriculture and secondly, councillors are part of urban local government who are the closest political authority to the residents in a city.
See the field report below.
Report by Sidhant Kumar, Research Assistant.
