The city’s iconic dabbawallas have teamed up with retired IPS officer D Sivanandan and UK-based NRI businessman Nitin Khanapurkar to launch “Mumbai Roti Bank”, a platform under which GPS-tracked vans would collect excess food from various eating joints, households and functions, and distribute it among poor, hungry and needy people across the city.
The novel platform aimed at waging a “war against hunger” was launched on Saturday, with Sivanandan – who was the Mumbai Police Commissioner and Maharashtra’s Director General Police (DGP) donating the first van for the project at Lower Parel station in south-central Mumbai to set the project into motion. ‘Mumbai Roti Bank’ plans to roll out another three-four food vans shortly.
Giving details of the new initiative, Mumbai Dabbawalas chief Subhash Talekar said: “Under ‘Mumbai Roti Bank’, we will deploy GPS-tracked vans to collect excess food from restaurants, eateries, clubs, five-star hotels, events, public functions or marriages, besides households, and distribute them among poor, hungry and needy people across the metropolis”.
Talekar said that on their own, Mumbai’s dabbawalas had embarked upon their own Roti Bank initiative through which they have been collecting extra food from households or organisations and distribute it among the poor. “At our level, we are doing at a lower scale. We are reaching food to at least 300 needy people every day,” he said.
According to Talekar, the ongoing “roti banl” initiative is independent of the “Mumbai Roti Bank” launched on a large scale across Mumbai.Talekar said that “Roti Bank” concept would be popularised across the country in stage. “The fact remains that to make this concept success, we need more public participation in the venture, which is being managed currently by volunteers offering free service,” Talekar said
“ On one hand an estimated 20 crore people daily sleep hungry, 3000 infants die due to malnutrition and hunger every day in India, while on the other hand, there is huge wastage of food, especially at big events, parties, marriages etc,” Talekar said.
Khanapurkar exhorted all stakeholders to take advantage of the ‘Mumbai Roti Bank’ and call up whenever they were saddled with excessive food to collect it while it was still fresh so it could be distributed among the needy and hungry or pavement dwellers in the city.
“People and organisations who have excess food to spare can call up a 24x7 helpline to call up on mobile number 9111891118 or write to www.rotibankindia.org and provide information about the location from where the excess food has to be picked up. We will do the rest,” Sivanandan said.