Knowledge Power

Chintan is constantly pushing for policy shifts that enable environmental justice. To do this, we need answers to key questions, and this requires rigorous research, extensive consultation and discussion, and multi-level dissemination of knowledge. This is the objective of our Knowledge Power programme.

What Chintan Does

Chintan is currently engaged in two research projects:

• The first, in partnership with the Centre for Advanced Studies for India, University of Pennsylvania, seeks to understand the barriers to and opportunities in Dalit entrepreneurship in the recycling sector.
• The second seeks to identify the barriers to recognition and formalization of informal-sector waste recycling in Delhi's non-authorized areas. The objective of this study is to push for a policy that will incentivize increasing formalization and creating green jobs. Chintan's partner in this is the Delhi Government.

Chintan also believes that research alone does not power knowledge and action. We are convinced that art, in particular, can play an important role in provoking public thinking. Therefore, one key strategy we deploy is to partner with artists and artists' groups that work in the area of consumption and detritus, or on related issues that are central to Chintan's mission.

This partnership can be of many kinds, ranging from active brainstorming, research and collaboration to simply linking up the artists with waste recyclers and facilitating a mutually beneficial exchange.

Here is a list of some of our artistic collaborations. Please click on each name to learn more:

• Khoj International Artists' Association
• Enrico Fabian
• Vivan Sundaram
• Gigi Scaria
• Students of the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi
  

Recipe book of dishes from discarded food material

Food is one of those things never accounted for in our trash. Yet, Chintan's experience with handling solid waste shows that nearly everyone wastes a lot of food. Not only food, but we also waste a lot of things that could easily have been cooked, had we known.

Both in India and globally, there are several kinds of foods created from what we now discard -watermelon rind, pea shells etc. To start making change, and help people to see the delicacies possible from such non-foods, as it were, Chintan is bringing out a recipe book about dishes made from edible food material that is usually discarded. We are being helped in this effort by a volunteer, Raghav Bikhchandani, who loves good food and wants to do something about the planet.

We are also doing this keeping in mind the ongoing world food crisis. If you have any such recipes and are willing to share them, or share any other information, please contribute by sending these to nidhi@chintan-india.org You will get credit for your contribution to this effort.